Skilled Workers

By Mark Heintz

On Monday, April 6, 2015, our district had an in-service day.  In the new contract signed last year, our Education Association and District Administration agreed to add an in-service day to the school calendar.  The day's intent was to allow teachers time to digitally convert their curriculum.   The day was great!  In the early stages of planning, I might have been a nay-sayer, but thanks to @Ashida_Linda and @MrsMiklusak, their wisdom prevailed.   In the morning,  spark sessions were given from a variety of staff members on topics from flipped classroom to the use of stop motion videos. The spark sessions flowed to two hours of EdCamp. You can read more about it here.  

Not to change subjects, but recently my history classes finished learning about the industrial revolution.  I can't help but make the connection between the in-service day and industrialization.  No, I am not talking about horrible working conditions or child labor.  I am writing on the needs for educated workers and the development of skilled laborers to work in factories.  People needed to be educated to work the complicated machines and perform a specialized job.

The in-service day showed how teaching has become increasingly skilled.  With the proliferation of technology and the ease of accessing information, teachers are shifting their role. New brain research drives educators to understand what methods work better to maximize learning.  Brain research coupled with new technology, it is hard to stay current with both the brain research and the technology.   The pedagogical techniques to meld these two together are difficult skills to master. The in-service day was great way to allow teachers to see a variety of new techniques and hear the latest brain research on effective teaching.  It was even better because the day allowed for time to development, collaborate, explore and create materials for their classroom from the new understandings they received at the beginning portion of the day.

A final thought: the day reminded my of a scene from Scrubs where two doctors are talking about how hard it is to stay up on the current research and how times have changed.  I have only been teaching for nine years, and the changes are drastic from when I first began.  I am fortunate to be in a school and district that has so many support systems in place to provide the tools and knowledge to become even more specialized and skilled in the art of teaching.  The teachers I work with constantly push me to new understandings of students and different ways to approach the subject matter.  I work in a school where teachers share ideas constantly.  It makes it easier to grow and stay current in a world that is ever changing.

The Impact of Social Media in the Classroom

Today the CollabLab welcomes Joe Bush, a teacher in the Social Studies department at Elk Grove.  Joe can be reached @josephdbush

I was never too fond of the term "social media."  I felt like it was a waste of time or something people did just to see others “like” pictures that were posted.  My perspective changed a great deal when social media avenues such as Twitter and Blogspot were presented in a new and interesting way. At the beginning of my Leadership Through Service Class, Linda Ashida came in and discussed digital leadership and digital footprints. These terms were foreign to me in the first place, but I quickly saw the powerful nature of blogging and tweeting. 

The first step we took in developing a digital footprint for both my students and myself was creating professional twitter accounts. These were to be used to help students connect with teachers, leaders, and each other as a forum to discuss topics with leadership or curate what they have done throughout the year. 

Although it has only been two months, my students and myself have made huge strides in chronicling our successes in class through Twitter (#EGLTS).  In addition, we have all made connections with leaders in the business community who have led us down avenues of positive leadership and growth.  The connections have expanded our worldviews and have helped us to grow into better people and leaders. 

In addition to Twitter, we have also used Blogspot to archive our class successes.  Every other week, students are given a topic to Blog about.  We have the benefit of reading each other’s blogs and commenting on them. This gives the students an authentic audience to share ideas with.  Overall I am very pleased with the use of social media in my class. Students have taken it seriously, we have connected with outside resources that we did not even know existed, and have grown as leaders.