Shu-NCrew

Why Instant Message? We already have email…

School after school I visit has blocked instant messengers. Yet, over and over we encourage collaboration. The kids know how to instant message, and they ‘collaborate’ during tests. Schools answer this unauthorized collaboration, better known as cheating, with blocks on all instant messengers. Even the teachers’ instant messengers in the webmail we (over)pay for is blocked. Here’s why we should fight that:

Yesterday, I was teaching my students when to use good and when to use well. I was mid-sentence, when the burp of the overhead intercom interrupted me with a crackling announcement that J__ Smith was to come to the office. I rolled my eyes at my kids, and after wondering aloud where I had been, we got back to it. Then, the classroom phone rang. It was another teacher a few doors down with a question about a student. After that, a student walked in from the office with a note admitting him to class with a time of ten minutes ago. I asked the kid where he had been, and he said he had just left the office. I figured he had been wandering around the school aimlessly for ten minutes, but I didn’t want to interrupt the lesson further to investigate. Again, I got back to work after wondering where I had been before being interrupted. A few minutes later, we had an overhead announcement that the school was facing a ‘code yellow’ situation, and all teachers should act accordingly.
I remembered that there had been a meeting seven months ago about which code meant what, but we hadn’t used any of the codes since. I poked my head into the hall, and I saw other teachers like lemurs on a lonely prairie, glancing curiously about. Nobody knew what a code yellow meant. Was it a tornado or a lockdown drill? One meant everyone filed into the hall, the other meant we lock our doors and turn off the lights. Uh-oh.

We speak in code because we don’t want students to panic… but the information is important NOW -no time to wait for people to check email when they get around to it. We interrupt each other and distract students, because we need immediate action. But there’s a better way, and the kids already know the solution. It’s instant messaging. Imagine if while teaching, there was a brief ding from my desktop or laptop. It would mean that I could finish my sentence and find out what the office needs without missing a beat. Teachers could communicate… and collaborate… with ease. But most importantly, school safety would be positively affected. Rather than autonomous classroom units, teachers would suddenly become a net of nurturing, communicating guardians, working together to protect and support our students. Support instant messaging for teachers in your school. It will mean fewer interruptions during class, and it could mean the difference between a tornado drill and a lockdown situation.

-Shu

Tags: alternative education, communication at school, disrupting education, disruptive classroom, im, instant messaging, interrupting class

Do you have a project and need supplies, or do you need some technology in your classroom?
Is the principal muttering about money not growing on trees every time you bring it up?

Adopt-A-Classroom is a nonprofit organization that helps teachers get money directly into their classrooms without worrying about budgetary beaurocracy. Nobody tells the teacher how to spend the money; it’s donated to your classroom, so it’s your call. This year, I got money for:

1. ten headsets with microphones; now my students can record answers in Audacity, a program I’ll go over in a blog coming soon. They can also record narrations in PowerPoint presentations.
2. 512 mb USB drives for every student; now my students can keep all their work on their keychain rather than in a giant 3-ring notebook. It’s saved the school hundreds of dollars in copies already.
3. an extra printer with ink; now my student can print color copies or black and white for when they do need an occasional hard copy.
4. 10 USB optical mouses; now my students don’t take the balls out (why do kids do that?), the mouses actually work instead of getting filled with crud, and they have the little wheel on the top of the mouse that makes navigation easy.
5. flowers and a terrarium; now my classroom looks and smells nice. Of course, the terrarium has a big Venus Fly Trap and lots of baby crickets… kind of a guy’s version of a flower garden.
6. a scanner; now I can take old handouts, scan them to .pdf format, email them to the kids’ free google accounts, and the kids can keep them on their USB drives. Again, it’s paper-free. I can also scan in handouts and then project the .pdf version on the wall using my digital projector.
7. a digital projector, which is incredibly valuable in myriad ways. More on that in future blogs.

All you have to do is sign up for an account. After you sign in, you’ll follow the steps to ask for cash. It’s all self-explanatory, so I won’t redundantly list the instructions here.

There are a couple of little tidbits I will divulge though.

1. The staff at Adopt-A-Classroom will answer your emails personally and quickly.

2. When you get a cash donation, you do not have to spend it on the stores the website provides. If you email them and tell them that you can spend the money better locally, then they’ll just ask you for a receipt and then reimburse you.

They’re great, because they handle all the tax documentation that your donators might need. Most importantly, though, since ‘you’ solicited the money, you decide how it’s spent.

Now it’s time to think about all those contacts you have outside the world of education. All you need is email addresses. Who has money and might donate personally? What businesses might donate to your classroom for the tax break? What are you teaching that people in the community might be excited about? Who might be excited about it? What could you buy to make the lessons really cool for kids?
Now go get some cash!

-Shu

Tags: classroom cash, classroom funding, directly funding classrooms, money, money for teachers, teachers, tips for teachers