Mr. B-G's Blog

Well, I'm here in Orlando, FL, putting the finishng touches on my presentation at the 2013 Florida Educational Tehnology Conference. FETC is the nation's most comprehensive edtech conference, and I'm excited to be a part of it. I'll be making a presentation on how I've used a free screen recording program, Screencast-O-Matic, to create tutorial videos for my students, which I've uploaded to BGtechnology, my YouTube channel.

I first learned of Screencast-O-Matic through my Master of Educational Technology degree with Boise State University's EDTECH department. It's a simple and free way to create video tutorials on almost any topic. By using YouTube as my delivery vehicle, any student with an Internet connection can view the videos. Most of the videos I make are three minutes or under. I find that brevity is essential, as it's easy to tune out anything that isn't concise or straightforward.

I'll sometimes play a video at the beginning of class when I'm introducing a new skill, task, or concept, and then have students to refer back to the video on their own as needed. This helps eliminate unnecessary repetition, as students who got it the first time can begin their work, while others who need the information or steps repeated can cue up the video and watch at their own pace. Of course, if there's something they don't understand in the video, I am there in class to answer their questions.

To be clear, I am not assigning videos to students to watch at home, a la the flipped classroom. Rather, these videos aid me when giving direct instruction in the classroom.

I hope to blog regularly this week about both my presentation and some of the session highlights I attend. In particular, I'm excited about hearing Google's Jaime Casap and New Jersey high school principal Eric Sheninger.

Tomorrow begins week two of the 2011-2012 school year. One of the tasks students will be expected to complete for Tuesday is the creation of a Gmail account. While the majority of my seniors already had Gmail accounts, the same cannot be said for my freshmen. And, for those students who did use Gmail, very few of them had ever used Google Docs, the free office suit that allows you to create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, surveys, and pictures, in addition to providing users with online storage for their documents.

One of the greatest benefits of Google Docs is, aside from the cost (free), its ease of use. All one needs to create a document is an Internet browser and an Internet connection. Work is saved automatically to the cloud, which is a huge benefit for students who are working on assignments both in school and at home. Google Docs also allows for easy collaboration, as multiple users may access and edit the same document in real time.

For the past three years, my school has placed emphasis on helping students transition from 8th to 9th grade. Aside from teaching content, all freshmen teachers are asked to explicitly teach organizational and study skills, as how students study is almost as important as what they study. Google Docs, I believe, is a crucial tool that will help students stay organized as they further develop their academic personas.

While Google Docs is a tool that students can use for all of their classes, Blogger is a tool that, at least initially, can be best utilized for English class. Because Blogger is run by Google, once students have a Gmail account, they're ready to create their own blogs. In 2007 I began using blogs as a way for students to share writing and provide each other with feedback. When you're writing for an audience beyond just your teacher, there's a little bit more incentive to see that your words accurately convey your ideas.

As a student, I certainly cared about grades, but I think I cared more about what my friends thought of me and my ideas. As a writer, having a real audience to read your work and provide you with feedback is invaluable. My role as a teacher is to model for students how to constructively respond to their classmates' writing. If I am successful, they will begin to look for the kinds of things that I would look for. And eventually, they'll be able to turn that critical eye on their own work.

Depending on students' previous exposure to the writing workshop model, this can either go smoothly or be quite arduous. Either way, we'll eventually get to a place where we feel comfortable sharing constructive feedback aimed at helping each other see how well our intentions for a piece measure up with reality.  

Google Docs image by Lucia Agut

As you might have noticed, I recently changed this blog's template. The text area is wider, and the font is larger. There's also a nice background image of a field and a trail leading up a hill. It's been a little while since I've posted regularly to Mr. B-G's English Blog. This is certainly not for a lack of ideas or a lessened desire to be a participant in the dialogue. Rather, obligations for my master's of educational technology degree with Boise State University have taken up much of the time I used to dedicate to blogging.

As part of a "culminating activity" for my degree, I will need to create an electronic portfolio full of blog post reflections, discussions, and "artifacts" from each of the 10 courses which will comprise my degree. So far I'm about halfway there, ready to begin my fifth class, "Theoretical Foundations of Educational Technology," in a couple of weeks.

Aside from my EDTECH classes, I also took an online course from Kent State University this past June called "Teaching Photoshop." It was a great way for me to overcome my fear of using some of Photoshop's more advanced features. Each week we had to create a project that utilized a variety of tools and filters. The lessons built on each other, requiring us to truly grasp earlier concepts if we were to have any success on the more complicated projects.

As far as learning tangible skills, it was one of the best online courses I've taken. I'm excited about the opportunity to help my students take their Photoshop know-how to the next level.

So, yeah. Graduate school. That's my excuse for not blogging as frequently. It's certainly valid, but it's not the sole reason. Truth be told, so many of the harmful developments in education, and the hurtful and derogatory ways teachers have been portrayed in the media and, subsequently, treated in reality, have given me pause about the number of years I have left in this profession.

Could I still end up spending my entire professional career in education? Sure. Does the possibility of doing something else also entice me, especially in the wake of the testing craze and the blame-teachers-for-all-the-ills-of-society rhetoric? Yes. 

This summer I taught myself how to build a computer. So far I've built two complete systems, with two more in the queue. I've really enjoyed the process of specing out a unit, amassing the components, and then putting them together so they function at an optimal level. It's very rewarding to be able to take the steps from concept to creation. 

As a kid I was interested in making things from salvaged or second-hand parts. In fourth grade I created an "inventor's club" at my elementary school, which featured regular meetings and trips to area museums. It was neat stuff, being on the cutting edge of an idea or the implementation of a theory. One "invention" I recall involved ripping the guts out of a standard walkie-talkie and retrofitting it with parts from old radios to boost the performance. 

After changing out a few things and stringing 20 feet of wire up a large evergreen tree in my backyard, I was able to listen to and speak with truckers on their CB radios. I remember this being quite awesome, especially because it was made possible by my own tinkering.

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I hope to return to this space more frequently as I work out my own feelings about where public education is headed in this country, and what my role will be. Shall I stick it out and work to be an implement of positive change (assuming this is still actually possible), or will politics and an edu-corporate agenda drive me to test the waters of free enterprise?

Stick around to find out.

Pine Tree image by chikachika72

Today after school I will be giving a technology presentation to new and veteran staffers as part of my high school's mentoring program. The program is designed to pair teachers new to the district with those who have been around the block a few times and established themselves within the system.

Six years ago when I was a new employee, I had the good fortune of being paired with a fellow English teacher who would both challenge and nourish me as a person and educator. One of the highlights of our first year as mentor and protegee was taking advantage of release time to visit other teachers and sit in on their lessons. I greatly appreciated the opportunity to see some of my fantastic colleagues in action, and also to experience life as a student. By the end of the day both of us were both exhausted and had trouble focusing. Teaching is certainly fatigue-inducing, but so is life as a student in the factory.

During the hour I have been given to present, I hope to provide a brief overview of Google Docs, Blogging, Twitter, Dropbox, Grou.ps, Photo Story, and Feedly. There's no way an hour will be anywhere close to sufficient to cover just one of those topics, but hopefully by providing teachers with links to various resources, they will be able to explore something that interests them on their own time.

Today concludes my second day back at school. It also marks my 200th blog post! So far the year is off to a good start. I'm enjoying getting to know my new students, and it's nice to see them engaging with the work. My only complaint would be with the heat. It's been in the mid 90s these first two days, and looks to continue through at least tomorrow.

I've started tweeting my homework assignments on bgassignments. Some students seemed to think this was cool, while others didn't know what to make of it. In time I think they will grow to appreciate having an easily accessible list of assignments that also includes key handouts in digital form. I imagine parents will also be interested in this, as it provides a lot of information about what students have been - and will be - doing.

I'll have to celebrate reaching 200 posts this weekend. There's still two days left in this week, and a lot to do before Friday 2 p.m.!

For those interested in learning more about Boise State University's EDTECH graduate program, take a look at the video below. I'm only two classes into my degree, so I haven't had a chance to take a class that makes use of Second Life. It certainly looks like it could have promise.

I think good educators draw on a variety of resources and strategies to get students engaged in the curriculum. Could the virtual world of Second Life be one of these resources I use? Sure. Does this mean that the concrete here-and-now goes out the window? Of course not.

As an online student, most of my learning occurs through a pixilated environment. As a high school classroom teacher, the majority of my interactions with students are face-to-face; this despite the fact that they spend one-third of their day interacting with screens. While there is definitely a benefit to incorporating virtual worlds and online interaction into my teaching, it's worth noting that some of the most meaningful classes I've had have occurred in the format of an old-fashioned Socratic seminar. 

A few weeks ago I was selected to be part of an innovative team of educators who will be responsible for laying the groundwork for an online high school in Massachusetts. Thanks to a $400,000 grant, pockets of teachers from across the state will develop quarterly online courses that can be administered to students via computers through the Internet.

I met recently with five other content area teachers at a regional educational collaborative. There we were given laptops and offered an opportunity to explore various Web 2.0 tools. Once we become familiar with the electronic options available to us, we'll conceptualize how to best put them to use to teach students the curriculum they need to earn a high school diploma.

The majority of my work will be done in the fall, when I will actually create the class using the Moodle content management system. Once the course is set up, I will administer one pilot section of it in the spring. The goal is to fine-tune the course for the state so that eventually, other tech-savvy, certified educators will be able to teach the course to students from across MA.

Online learning has a number of benefits. The asynchronous nature allows for students to engage with the content during the hours that are most suitable for them and their lives. The discussion-board style discourse gives all equal voice. This is a contrast to brick-and-mortar classrooms, where the most vocal or loquacious students run the risk of dominating classroom conversation. Rather than get caught up in the heat of the moment, posters also have a chance to reflect on what it is they are learning, and how exactly they want to portray an idea or show their understanding of a concept.

Given that students spend nearly eight hours per day in front of screens, online learning also provides comfort and familiarity. The main drawback, obviously, is that students miss out on an opportunity for face-to-face contact and interaction. It's hard to truly get a"feel" for your teacher and classmates until you actually spend time with them in the same physical place.

One nice component about the course I'm piloting is that the students will be in a room with other students taking the class, and they'll have the assistance of a paraprofessional. Thanks to Skype and other video conferencing programs, students and paras will be able to converse with the "behind the screen" teacher to ask questions and receive immediate feedback.

As an aside, one of the teachers in my cohort was an old friend from my undergraduate days at UMass whom I hadn't seen in more than 10 years. It was great to reconnect with her, and served to further drive home the notion that it really is a small world, and we are connected in more ways than we realize.

Photo credit iStockphoto

At a recent TED event, school technology leader Scott McLeod admonishes the current educational establishment for sticking its head in the sand and failing to adjust to the digitally and globally connected world.

In this video, McLeod describes 21st century classrooms that look nearly identical to the classrooms of 1890. He calls for a rethinking of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, and states that every kid needs access to a computer.

"It's a digital world. We're going to have to stop pretending that it's a paper and pencil world in schools," McLeod says.

As currently constructed, school environments are set up to prepare kids for the last 50 years, not the next 50 years, McLeod observes. He says schools are failing in their three essential functions, which are to develop students who are socially functional, economically productive, and able to master the dominate information landscape of their time.

"We can see quite clearly that we have some disconnects that cannot continue to be maintained."



I happen to agree with a lot of what McLeod talks about. It is for some of these reasons that I chose to go back to school for a master's degree in educational technology.

As I wrote about recently, it's made for a full year. In the end, though, the effort will pay off, as it will help me provide my students with a 21st century education that's relevant to their lives, needs, and the world they will inhabit.

Take a moment to vote for a chance to win a free LCD projector for your school. The 10 schools with the most votes will win. All schools located in the United States are eligible. For more info, click here.



Note - Usually I don't feature contests or advertisements on my blog, but occasionally if I feel something is warranted, I will include it. As a teacher interested in the integration of technology in the classroom, I believe the benefits of sharing this information outweigh the potential downsides of featuring a corporate promotion in a blog post.

I enjoyed this short video about students using technology in their English class. While I have yet to incorporate Twitter into a lesson, it's something I'm open to trying. The National Council of Teachers of English has recommended that teachers begin working 21st century literacies into the classroom. The NCTE has also put together a policy brief for teachers and administrators about what 21st century literacies are, and what they look like in the classroom.



Here is one more video about using Twitter specifically in the classroom.

A decent primer on how to use copyrighted material in online videos. Click here to download the "Code of Best Practices" in PDF form.

A couple of weeks ago I bought my first netbook, the ASUS Eee PC 1000HE. It's light, powerful, plays videos better than my laptop, runs Windows XP (no Vista compatibility issues or unnecessary resource hogging), and, best of all, has an incredible battery life of more than 8 hours on one charge.

I scored it at a funky tech web retailer called ZipZoomfly.com for $349 thanks to a mail-in rebate. The Eee PC earned fantastic reviews on Amazon, and has so far lived up to the hype. I like it because I can bring it to any room in my house and surf the net or check up on my Yahoo Fantasy Baseball team, the Alliteration Animals (who are currently in second place). I recently used it to read essays students had posted to their class blogs from the comfort of my living room couch.

The Eee PC will even pick up an Internet signal from the porch outside, which makes it the perfect companion for reading the newspaper online along with a cup of coffee and a blueberry smoothy - a morning delicacy I reserve for the weekends. Given that the weather is finally getting nice, I wanted the ability to bring the web outdoors so I wouldn't feel guilty about sitting behind a computer screen inside my house on a pleasant day.

A couple of weeks ago I made a request for my school to use some of President Obama's federal stimulus money to purchase Eee PCs for the classroom. The laptop computers at our school can be tempermental, and rarely hold a charge for more than an hour and a half. The beauty of the Eee PC is that one charge will get it though an entire school day, which means it can be used consecutively class after class after class.

The size of the keyboard is 92 percent that of a standard typing pad, which takes a little getting used to, but is still quite managable. Programs run quickly, the display is sharp and bright, and the Eee PC has a fast Internet adapter that works with newer Wireless-N WiFi routers. No word yet on if my proposal has been approved by the administration, but it would sure be nifty to have these devices available for use next year at school. I think the students would dig the chic style and fast speed, and the smaller size would help them fit the Eee PC on their desks along with handouts, notebooks, and other materials.

Some observations and announcements as the ground begins to thaw...

Third quarter grades close this week. Fourth quarter here we come!

My seniors have a little more than 30 days left. Still enough time for their "three-search paper" and Lord of the Flies.

My journalism students won five scholastic awards at an area high school journalism contest. There were over 200 entries from more than 30 high schools across New England. I couldn't have been happier for my kids. Definitely one of the year's highlights.

I added a fifth student computer to my classroom. I saw one offered on Craigslist for cheap, and decided to pull the trigger. The workstations are great for group research projects, students looking to pull up and print an assignment, or those in need of a space to write before or after school. They also serve as backups if the school's laptop cart computers lose their charge or malfunction while we're using them in class.

I spent this past weekend in Salem. Visited the Salem Witch Museum, caught a live band at a Mexican restaurant, and went on a walking tour of the city. A much needed respite just before grades, MCAS, and general end-of-the-year craziness.

I recently formed a working group to discuss the possibility of creating a student-staffed writing center at my high school. Right now it looks like the logistics will prove too difficult, as there isn't much time in the school day for students to be able to visit a writing center, and there isn't funding in the budget to hire a professional staff member to supervise it and train writing tutors.

With April comes the poetry unit I do with my 9th graders. It's one of my favorite units, and the kids have a lot of creative freedom to pursue poets and poems of interest. They analyze poetry, write their own poems, and write a research essay on a poet of their choice. They bind all this poetic goodness together in an anthology. There's also poetry reading, poetry slam, and poetry recitation. Check out this past blog post for more info about my poetry unit.

Last week I joined a Yahoo Fantasy Baseball League with some friends. My team, the Alliteration Animals, is poised to dominate. Its strength lies in the infield and bullpen. Outfielders and starting pitchers are always easy to acquire as the baseball season gets underway. But good second baseman, shortstops, and closers are harder to come by. That's who I drafted.

Right now I'm about 170 pages into Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. It's engrossing, fast-moving, and extremely violent. With themes from Brave New World, 1984, and Lord of the Flies, it's right up my thematic alley. I know many of my seniors would love it, but it's probably too gruesome and morbid to ever make its way onto our high school's summer reading list or English Department curriculum.

I think it's time to end this missive and get the coffee ready for the morning. I hope all who read this blog are well. Happy spring!

It seems like this could be a fun activity to do with students.

I've decided to mix things up here at Mr. B-G's English Blog. After stumbling across what just might be the most helpful Blogger site out there, Blogger Buster, and perusing its beautiful link list of blog templates, I made the decision to make a switch.

A word of warning to any of you newer bloggers considering a switch: Most - if not all - of your widgets will be lost, and chances are the things you liked about your old blog won't necessarily reproduce themselves in your new blog. However, if you keep searching for the right template, it's likely you'll eventually find more things that you DO like with a new look that will make a switch worthwhile.

I suppose I grew tired of my bland background. I wanted something a bit more graphically appealing, yet still visually simple and easy to read. This template, called Zen, seemed to satisfy both of those requirements.

Mr. B-G's English Blog is officially two years old. Two years isn't a lot of time - it feels like I've been blogging for about five. It's hard to imagine how I taught before this blog, as it's become so entwined in all I do as an educator.

This blog - and the subsequent network it spawned - serves a variety of purposes. This page is a space for me to reflect on my teaching, share the highs and lows of the profession, and network with other tech-savvy educators.

Since its genesis in December of 2006, Mr. B-G's English Blog has been seen by more than 32,500 people from across Massachusetts, the U.S., and the world. A quick look at my sitemeter profile shows recent visits from Osaka, Japan; Gostar, Iran; Rome, Italy; and Schniach, Germany. Closer to home, this site has been viewed by people in Arlington, MA; Princeton, NJ; Jackson, TN; and Los Angeles, CA.

There's been a measurable progression in terms of content and organization over the last two years. Within a few months of this blog's inception, I created a separate page for class handouts and teaching resources, and another dedicated to my journalism class and the newspaper I advise. I then created individual class blog pages where I posted student work.

New for this year was Mr. B-G's Blog Exemplar, a paged designed to help teachers and students create their own blogs. Rather than limiting my students' blogging experiences to individual class blogs that I control, I've taught my kids how to create their own. So far we've used them to post compare/contrast essays and book reviews. In a few weeks, students will publish their own short stories, followed later by an analytical essay on The Old Man and the Sea, original poetry, and Romeo & Juliet editorial columns.

I'll need to take stock at the end of the year to see if my students' writing is, overall, better than that of last year's students. My theory is that publication and greater control over the act of publishing leads to better-written pieces. Certainly the quality of my instruction and the opportunities I provide for peer sharing, editing, and revision have the greatest effect on the caliber of my students' writing, but all things being constant, my hunch is that their writing will be better because they have more ownership and control of its distribution to the masses. The fact that it's really easy to edit and revise the text of a blog post helps too.

It's hard to know what lies in store for Mr. B-G's English Blog in Year 3. While I don't post quite as often as I would like (usually 3 times per month), I do constantly add to my link lists. In addition to a place for writing, these blogs are also online bookmarks accessible to all. While I do use Foxmarks to sync my Firefox bookmarks on any computer I use, it's nice to have many of them saved in a public location for others to check out.

Over time I'd like to provide more opportunities for my students to post writing online. There's no substitute for an authentic audience that's ready and willing to give you feedback on your musings. To me, Web 2.0 tools make the writing process more "real," and give students a unique and powerful forum in which to communicate and learn.

I am in the process of teaching my students how to create their own blogs. As I wrote here, students will eventually have their own individual class blogs featuring writing from a variety of genres.

As the blogs pop up, I will begin posting assignments on a new page called Mr. B-G's Blog Exemplar. Here I will provide a simplified blog model for students to imitate, post writing assignments and comment instructions, and, over time, provide my own models of the assignments I would like students to complete.

To date I've been using Mr. B-G's English Blog to muse about my own teaching, take stances on all things education related, and post things I believe other teachers will enjoy reading.

I've also used it to post class assignments. In the future, all assignment instructions will be found on my "exemplar" blog. As usual, Mr. B-G's English Teaching Resources will still be the one-stop source for my handouts and links for the teaching and study of secondary English.

It is my hope that this new page will add an additional level of organization to Mr. B-G's English Blog. Feedback, as always, is appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

Image from http://www.masternewmedia.org/images/create-new-blog-commoncraft-0.jpg, accessed 9/11/08

We're just about a week into the new school year, and so far, things are going well.

My freshmen and seniors have been working on summer reading essays. I asked them to pick two characters from two books they read and have those characters meet and interact in the setting of one book. They needed to use dialogue, be descriptive, and keep it between 500 and 1000 words.

Most seem to have embraced the assignment. One of my seniors was working on an essay where James Bond meets Harry Potter. I can't wait to read it.

Students were asked to save their essays on my USB drives, which I am using to upload the essays to our class blogs. Students will then be able to read each others' work and post comments. Once the kids get the hang of reading and posting blog comments, I'm going to teach them how to create their own blogs. The idea here is that by the end of the year they'll have an electronic portfolio of writing in some of the major English genres (poetry, short story, personal narrative, analysis, compare & contrast, and research).

An added benefit of individual student blogs is they'll be in a much better position to revise, as they can take the feedback they get from comments and use them to make changes and improvements to their essays on the blog. For the past two years I've used class blogs that I control as the means for sharing student writing. These lacked a mechanism for revision, as students could not add or alter content.

Now, with individual pages, students should be able to experience the power that comes with publishing writing and the ownership of knowing they can alter and post content whenever they choose. Hopefully the blogs will spur students to write beyond the requirements for my class. If their usage of MySpace and Facebook are any indication, there's good reason to feel optimistic.