Fundraising with Justin Bieber

Several weeks ago, local pop radio station Kiss 98.5 announced a penny drive to benefit Women and Children’s hospital. The school that raises the most money wins a special concert by teen heartthrob Justin Bieber.

The middle school where I teach is all abuzz about the potential of winning the contest. Kids are bringing in money by the bag full. So what if he’s a flash in the pan? It’s raising money for a good cause.

To help promote the contest, I started making daily Bieber pictures for teachers to hang in their rooms. I’ve been Photoshopping stupid pictures since I was about 16, so it only takes about 15 minutes for me to make one, and the kids love it. I admit that I’ve never even heard a Justin Bieber song until just recently, but again, it’s for a good cause so I’ll pretend to be as excited about him as all the kids. Teachers seem entertained too – every morning I’m greeted with an inbox full of kudos from my colleagues on the day’s Bieber propaganda.

And this is why I’m so surprised to hear rumors of a grumbling few who find my daily emails offensive or inappropriate. A colleague warned me today that she had overheard two other members of the faculty complaining. They said they were going to email me and ask to stop sending pictures.

I look forward to reminding them that my pictures are all in good fun, and intended to raise money for an excellent organization. Furthermore, I completely stand behind anything that unifies a school and creates an environment of comradery.

Or maybe I can just remind them that it’s the holiday season.

Don’t be a grinch.

 

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Live Like You're on Camera (Part II)

The other day while flipping channels, I turned to CNN and caught a breaking news story. It wasn’t about the war overseas, or the numerous financial problems plaguing the U.S. – it was about TLC’s celeb-reality stars Jon and Kate Gosslin’s court appearance.

This was the event that demanded live coverage?

Over the course of the five seasons of  Jon and Kate plus 8, viewers have taken sides between the irritable Kate and the seemingly irresponsible Jon, but they’re all wrong. It’s both of their faults that their marriage (and the lives of their 8 children) have gone down the gutter. They didn’t live like their life was on camera.

This is ironic, because they literally spent every waking moment with a camera crew recording their every movement and ever spat. The reason their relationship fell a part was because they forgot about the cameras.

Let their public debacle be a lesson learned for all of us. As teachers, we are not plagued by television cameras in our classes. Instead, we have something far worse - dozens of pairs of eyes always curious to see what their teacher is going to do or say. Never get too comfortable.

Live - and teach - like you're on camera.
 
(Like this post? This was part II in my series of "live like you're on camera" posts. Read my other one, here.)

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Live Like You’re on Camera (Part I)

Google’s chief executive Eric Schmidt got himself into some hot water earlier this week when responding to a question regarding the privacy of Google users. His response prompted Mozilla’s Firefox to shift support to competing Microsoft engine Bing as a suggested add-on to the browser, but Schmidt’s answer made sense and was perhaps just a bit too honest for Firefox to stomach. He stated, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.”

Those are good words to live by, but I've got something better; similar sentiment, but with a nicer ring. 

Today marks the beginning of a three-part series that has been rattling around in my head for a few weeks. Defenestrate your proverbs, mantras, and words of wisdom. Follow my simple advice, and you will lead a long life free from the tangles of controversy.

Live like you’re on camera.

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Real World Example of Plagiarism

I occasionally mark posts on here with the tag “practice what you preach” because we must lead by example – as adults, as role models, as professionals. Unfortunately, not everyone follows that simple, time-tested mantra.

Here is a review for the inspirational movie “The Blind Side” published by Erica Yunghans for Dunkirk NY’s daily paper, the Observer on November 28th, 2009.

And here is another review for the same movie published about two weeks earlier by Associated Press writer Glenn Whipp.

Notice any similarities?

There are two things about this that shock me. First, that a professional writer (I’m assuming Yunghans has a degree in journalism) would have the audacity to plagiarize in the first place, and secondly that the Observer has not yet reprimanded one of their editors for committing such a blatant crime. As a professional daily publication, I would hope the Observer is conscience of its credibility and reputation.

I wanted to share these two links so that they can be passed on to your students. Use this as a real world example of plagiarism. Let the lesson be that while it’s very, very easy to steal another’s work from the Internet, it’s even easier to get caught doing so.

If you’d like to contact Erica Yunghans, she can be reached at eyunghans@observertoday.com.

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Using Etherpad in the Classroom

My students have spent the past few days reading and analyzing Poe’s classic poem, The Raven. I plan to use it to teach mood and imagery, but before that can happen they need a firm handle on the poem itself.

Classes were divided into groups of 3-4 and given the simple direction to read each stanza and then summarize it. Some stanzas are trickier than others, but overall this activity gives them a nice overview of the poem.

In the past, I would conclude this by randomly calling kids to share summaries as I wrote them on the board. This was a slow and laborious task to get through considering the poem is 18 stanzas long. Instead, I decided to give Etherpad a try.

I wrote about Etherpad in my post 10 Useful Chat Sites for Teachers. The thing that struck me most about the service wasn’t the chat capabilities, but the shared collaborating space that updates in real time. This is similar to Google Docs, but students can hop on and start collaborating without registering a username. Quick and easy.

It took about 30 seconds to set up the Etherpad workspace. Students figured it out with another 30 seconds of explanation. The first task was to have the seven groups in my class enter summaries for the 18 stanzas. Then, they went back and checked over what was written and either adding or amending what was there.

Each group’s work was highlighted with a different color, so it was easy for me to keep track of who was participating. There is also a playback feature that allowed me to see the whole thing unfold once the activity was complete (I used this to show off my students’ work when I open the workspace for my principal later in the day).

The only problem I encountered was when two groups wanted to work on the same stanza. It was actually quite comical – while one typed, the other deleted it to try and enter their own interpretation. I guess I shouldn’t complain when students fight over who gets to participate in a class activity.

When I noticed the typing on the workspace slowing, I took it as a sign that the groups were running out of ideas. I stopped the class and then went through each stanza’s summary. If there were things missing, I entered them as we talked. At the end of the period, I downloaded their work as a PDF and I can now make copies and hand it out tomorrow. We’ll use it tomorrow to begin looking at the mood of the poem.

Including the time it took me to turn the computer on, this activity took less then 5 minutes to set up and explain to my students. Etherpad worked very well for me. Rather than spend the period hovering over an overhead projector, students took control of the lesson. And they did a much better job of it together than I ever could alone.

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Internet Filtering - Restriction or Protection?

I still believe we should be teaching Internet responsibility and digital citizenship to our students instead of trying to hide all the bad things behind a big iron curtain. But the fact remains that the Internet is a complex and sometimes seedy beast. It’s easy to forget that fact when search results for well-intentioned lesson plans get blocked, or when you watch students spend a period trying to sneak their way onto a gaming website. This is when the frustrated teacher throws his/her hands in the air and declares the filter to be the work of the devil. But for every game blocked, that filtering software is also blocking potential predators, unsavory images, and God knows what else.

I was thinking about this more over the weekend while flipping through the Black Friday edition of The Buffalo News. There were two stories on the front page of the City and Region section that highlighted someone using the Internet. One was about a Michigan man using a Genealogy website to find his long-lost birthmother. The other was about a local filmmaker getting arrested for having downloaded more than 1300 child-porn images. These articles create an interesting juxtaposition.

So what’s the answer? Is it to open the floodgates and hope no one gets swept away in the current? Is it to turn off the lights and sit in darkness? Perhaps it’s a bit of both, but where to draw the line is as big (if not bigger) or a question that whether filtering is needed in the first place.

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