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Tuesday, 18 August 2009

  • Rules and Reasons for Using Facebook in the Classroom

    Put together the words "Facebook" and "teacher" and generally what most people expect to see is a news report about an educator being fired or put on probation for something or the other. As a result, quite a negative stigma has emerged regarding education and social networking sites. Despite this attitude, I am a strong proponent for utilizing social networking - specifically Twitter and Facebook - in the classroom. I've compiled a list of rules and reasons that accompany my opinion.

    1. Rule: Keep Your Private Life Private and Your Professional Life Professional
    I have two facebook accounts and two twitter accounts. In both cases one is public and one is private. The public accounts are my "professional" accounts. It is where I communicate with students, network, etc. The private accounts are my personal accounts. That is where I talk to my friends, make plans for the weekend, and post pictures of my New Years Eve celebration. There should be a very distinct line between your public and private lives, and you should never allow them to blur.


    2. Reason: Everyone is on Facebook
    This is not a "jump on the bandwagon" plea so much as it is an "appeal to the masses" reasoning. I could (and have) build a class website on a server that is made for educators. Your best students will check the website frequently and participate. But what about those students who are not among the most motivated? Odds are that they will not go to the webpage and eventually will forget that it even exists. Facebook, though? They're going to go to Facebook. They have to catch up with their friends, post their status, and take a bunch of menial quizzes! So when they are checking their News Feed they can't HELP but notice that Professor H. posted a homework reminder.




    3. Rule: Utilize Your Page Effectively
    Don't turn you professional page into a place to post what you're eating for dinner, or how excited you are for the trip to Vegas you're planning. Save that for your private, personal page. Instead, post homework reminders, questionnaires, contests, quotes, book reviews, etc. Keep it relevant to the subject you teach and the students you teach.



    4. Reason: Technology is Relevant
    Thank God the old ways of teaching are on their way out the door. No longer is a classroom about the teacher reading off a bunch of irrelevent information while the students write it down verbatim. We live in a world where you can post your homework assignment online. Where students EXPECT their curriculum to utilize technology, because they use it constantly. Just as an example, I had at least ten students last year in my Advanced Placement classes who took their notes by typing them onto their cell phones instead of hand writing them.



    5. Rule: No Stalking
    I'm not talking about peeping Tom-type stalking (although you shouldn't do that either). What I'm talking about is when you check your News Feed and see that your prize student has posted a photo album entitled "Spring Break 2009 - CRUNK!". A word of caution to all of you: DO NOT CLICK ON THE ALBUM. When you go through the album and stumble upon the inevitable picture of said prize student doing something they shouldn't be you take on a moral and legal responsibility to alert someone. Don't get sucked into finding out everything you can about your students lives. It's just a bad road to go down; trust me when I say that you'd rather not know.





    These are just a few general guidelines and reasons behind using Facebook. Really, it's up to teachers to maintain professionalism when in contact with their students, whether it is in school or out of school or online. So please, use your best discretion, but be open-minded! Technology is not all bad!



Sunday, 10 May 2009

  • The Downside of Teaching.

    Let me preface this entry by saying that I love my job. It's the best job that I've ever had and (most) of my students are a joy. A difficult, whiny, confusing, makes-me-want-to-rip-my-hair-out joy, but a joy nonetheless. Still, as with any job there are downsides. Inspired by this blog, I decided to highlight a few of them.


    1. You Have To Be Switzerland
    Opinions of any sort are frowned upon. You must be careful about every word that comes out of your mouth, because if you aren't and ONE person takes offense, you'll be collecting an unemployment check faster than you can say "Not fair!".
    One of the great things about teaching is the fact that you can connect with students. It's very hard to connect when you have to respond with "I don't want to share that with you. My opinion doesn't matter" at the end of EVERY question they ask.

    2. Bureaucracy
    "You're here to teach." That's what they tell you, right? Well, yes, you are there to teach. Unfortunately you're also there to fill out several mountains of paperwork, endure sudden curriculum changes, yell at kids in the hallway, call a bajillion parents, fill out more paperwork, attend ARD's, chaperone events aaaand fill out more paperwork. It's a nightmare. Sometimes I am so bogged down with other (paper)work that I forget I'm a teacher.

    3. No Respect
    If you go to a "normal" job, odds are that people will greet you pleasantly, make small talk, etc. Very rarely will Jim Bob from one cubicle over start jumping up and down cussing at you about how they hate you and wish you would die. Jim Bob also probably doesn't ask "Do I haaaaaaaave to" anytime to make a request of him. Additionally, he probably doesn't fall asleep on you in the middle of a conversation and then get mad when you wake him up.

    4. We Are Glorified Babysitters
    You know what's sad? When you have to tell an 18-year-old boy to keep his hands to himself. Or yell at a 16-year-old boy for putting a tack on someones chair (dead serious, this happened). Similarly, quite a few parents have the unfortunate mindset that they are not responsible for their kids education. That's our job, not theirs. Sorry to break it to you, mom, but learning doesn't stop at 2:30.

    5. The Students Have More Rights Than We Do
    If a student were to punch me in the face, who would get in trouble? Well, unfortunately in today's society probably me. Something I said or did probably "scarred" this student for life. Similarly, if a student doesn't like a teacher, all they have to do is say that the teacher hugged them the wrong way and bada-bing bada-boom, the teacher is out of a job. I find this news report to be especially ridiculous: http://www.wyff4.com/news/18800227/detail.html

    6. No Privacy.
    Everytime I see the news put up a teachers myspace picture I cringe. It's like we're not allowed to be human. OMG DOES SHE HAVE A BEER!?!?!? HOW DARE THAT 28 YEAR OLD TEACHER DRINK ALCOHOLLZ! RAWR! Yes, I understand that you need to be tactful. I don't post anything that is scandalous, and nor should I be allowed to. It sets a bad image for the system. However, there's no need to freak out over the fact that a teacher went to happy hour.


    All of the negatives aside, though, teaching is truly one of the most rewarding careers out there. Once you get past all of the tip-toeing, beraucracy, disrespectful students and annoying media attention, it's awesome. I get to watch my students make their way through high school and, if I do my job right, I can say that I contributed to their growth as human beings. I love it, and wouldn't have it any other way. :)

Sunday, 03 May 2009

  • Nostalgia


    I miss running through the soft Ohio grass barefoot, without any worry of rattlesnakes or fire ants.

    I miss picking fresh blackberries off of their stems and eating them right there in the woods, feeling the tangy juice explode in my mouth, assaulting my taste buds.

    I miss the smell of worms after it rains.

    I miss the way that my mom would sit on the front porch on nice days, watching my progress home from the bus stop.

    I miss the endless games with my brothers. Tag, Hide and Seek, Around the World...whenever we ran out we would invent a new one.

    I miss our families RV, which we would drive all across the country, getting into various mishaps. One time we nearly drove off of a mountain. Another time we ended up in a toxic waste dump. Yet another adventure led us into a cornfield and being threatened at gunpoint by an old farmer in pajamas.

    I miss the way my mother would get hysterical when all of the above occurred.

    I miss the never-ending Genesis disc's my dad would play on road trips.

    I miss TGIF and SNICK.

    I miss eating all of the junk food in the world without worrying about calories or exercising.

    I miss our dog, Katie, who was the smartest dog we ever had and the only one to ever truly understand fetch.

    I miss ice cream nights on hot summer days, and sitting out on the porch to watch the heat lightning.

    I miss skiing in the mountains in the deepest of winter with my dad.

    I miss going to bed before it's dark outside, with the smell of grass still on my skin.

    I miss nights of driving nowhere in particular, just driving because gas was cheap and I was young and had nowhere to go and great company alongside me.

    I miss drive-in movies in the rain.

    I miss catching lightning bugs, only to let them go after making a wish.

    I miss that time when I had nothing holding me back. No preconceived notions of how I "should" behave. It was just me and my emotions and my life and nothing was holding me back.

    What do you miss?

Sunday, 26 April 2009

  • Plagiarism

    Last week I had to threaten all 60 of my Advanced Placement students with course failure. I came very close to following through with my threat, too. What would bring me, an otherwise fair and forgiving teacher, to set my wrath upon these poor over-achieving wannabe's?

    Plagiarism.

    Let me be perfectly clear. The more time passes, the more internet-savvy teachers come along, the EASIER IT IS FOR YOU TO GET CAUGHT! Don't plagiarize, you lazy moron. Do the work and take some pride in yourself.

    So, in an effort to avoid further failures, allow me to present a few tips.

    1) If you didn't wake up knowing it, cite it.
    Did you put in your paper that basketball is the most popular sport? Unless you personally conducted a survey of every sports fan in the universe, I want to see where you found that out at.

    2) Buy a good reference book.
    I use Writing Research Papers by Lester & Lester. I was forced to buy it in 11th grade and it has become my research Bible. Seriously, guys. No one expects you to memorize this stuff. Get yourself a good reference source and keep it on hand.

    3) Yes, you have to cite that .jpeg
    This was shocking to my students. They did not know that images must be cited. Consider this a warning to any and all students reading my blog: cite your freaking pictures! Most teachers will overlook this faux pas, but when you get that ONE teacher who cares, tough luck.

    4) Just because you can do it online, doesn't make it okay for a report
    Obviously, I don't cite everything in every blog I write. In fact, I'm pretty sure almost every blogger has committed plagiarism, whether knowingly or not. Still, I do my best to give credit when credit is due. This lax viewpoint is NOT okay when turning in a thesis, research paper, dissertation, research proposal, etc. Don't even think about it.

    5) Don't try to fool the teacher
    Okay, first of all we teachers are not idiots. We're TEACHERS. We are the ones responsible for making sure that you enter this world with at least an iota of sense in that skull of yours. So do NOT think that you can pull a fast one on us! We are very familiar with the tricks of the trade. We probably used most of them ourselves when we were younger and more naive. Consider two papers: one in which someone copies and pastes from Sparknotes without citing, the other where one copies and pastes key phrases from Sparknotes but cites it properly. Which one do you think receives a pass and which becomes epic fail? Yeah, exactly. You actually sound SMARTER when you tell me you "cheated" and used Sparknotes for help. Weird how that works, huh?

    6) Don't fight it. Learn it.
    I know it's ridiculous that the period HAS to go behind the parenthesis and the ellipsis MUST go inside brackets. I know it sucks that if your quotation marks are misplaced you are "technically" plagiarizing. Do yourself a favor and double check your work with that wonderful reference book (#2) before you turn work in. That way, when you have Mr. MLA-Anal for a professor, your ass is covered.

    On the same note, you can whine and complain about how "pointless" citations are, but that is not going to make them disappear. Shut up and deal with it.

    7) Don't wait unti the last minute
    Seriously, guys. If you're writing your paper an hour before its due odds are some of it will be wrong. Odds are even higher that what is wrong is your citations. Just saying.

    8) Consider the consequences
    I always hate to focus on punishment, but this is actually pretty serious. Especially in college, and especially if you have a turd of a professor who considers a misplaced comma a capitol offence. So here's what can happen if you are caught plagiarizing at the college level:
    • You fail the course.
    • You are promptly asked to leave the university, with no refund.
    • You are forced to move back to your parents basement.
    • You will be blacklisted, which means that you will be denied admission to all public institutions in the U.S.
    • If the university publishes your material before it is caught, you can potentially be sued.
    • Your boy/girlfriend will break up with you and you will die alone.
    Okay, maybe not the last one. Still, guys, this is serious stuff! Check this out from plagiarism.org:

    "Most cases of plagiarism are considered misdemeanors, punishable by fines of anywhere between $100 and $50,000 -- and up to one year in jail.

    Plagiarism can also be considered a felony under certain state and federal laws. For example, if a plagiarist copies and earns more than $2,500 from copyrighted material, he or she may face up to $250,000 in fines and up to ten years in jail" ("Legal Punishments").

    For more information on plagiarism check it out here: http://www.plagiarism.org/index.html

    Have you ever plagiarized, whether on accident or on purpose? What happened?

Friday, 03 April 2009

  • "Don't Touch That" - A Lesson in Following Directions

    Last weekend my mother and I were on a mission. We needed to find her a dress to wear to my wedding, and we had searched everywhere. Needless to say, this required a massive amount of me driving all around Houston, which is not my favorite thing to do.

    So, as we're driving in a section of town that is particularly boggled down by slow traffic lights I decide to do something stupid.

    Let me preface this: I don't smoke, nor do I allow people to smoke in my car. I hate the smell of cigarettes and it takes FOREVER to get it out of the fabric. So my cigarette lighter has only ever really seen the likes of GPS and cell phone chargers during the seven years we've been together.

    So, since I'm ignorant about all things tobacco related I ask my mom how the lighter works. She explains to me that you push it in and when it pops out it will be heated up, the tip will be red and you light your cancer stick. Easy, right?

    So I push the cigarette lighter in, deciding to see just how it works. I'm a very kinesthetic person. Hands on. I have to actually do it to know it works. So I push the lighter in. The only problem: it doesn't stay in. I fight with it for a few seconds, pushing and turning, pushing harder, etc. (that's what she said), but finally I give up and pull the danged thing out. After carefully examining the coils I determine that they didn't even turn red! Stupid lighter, doesn't even work!

    "Don't touch that, it's hot." My mom warned.

    "Did it even work?" I ask. I'm not convinced.So I reach out and touch it.

    ...

    ...
    ...

    ....
    ...

    Ow.


    And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I learned that following directions is generally a good idea, unless you want to be screaming in pain while trying to navigate traffic during rush hour.