Processing student feedback

For a class evaluation, I gave my students a form based on the NBPTS World Language standards.  For a variety of reasons, mostly accidental, I only ended up giving it to my Spanish II and my Spanish I classes.  By nature, these students are the ones most inclined to like class; they signed up for it, after all.  For that same reason, though, they're the ones most likely to call BS if there's a problem, I think.  I've just finished going over them, and here are some of the highlights:

On a scale of 1-5, in both classes, I averaged better than 3 in every category.  My median and mode scores in every category were also 3 or better. 

The 2 categories I did worst in were "forming constructive relationships with students and families" and "knowledgable about how students learn language."  As far as forming constructive relationships, the dissaatisfaction can come from a lot of different angles.  I wish I'd asked a more specific question.  Is it the "family" part I don't do so well on, or is it the "students" part, or is it the "forming relationships" part?  I know I don't call home as much as I should to say nice things about students.  I'm working on it, but it takes a while.  The "students learn language" one was surprising to me.  I thought I did pretty well.

My consistently lowest scores were from my Spanish II class, who mostly came away with the impression that I don't value diversity and I don't understand the different ways students learn.  In short, I think, they don't think I valued them as individuals.  That's too bad, because I loved them as individuals. 
 
One of the classes thought things went better in the first semester, when I spoke more Spanish, than the second semester.  They seemed to think we had more fun.  The other class thought it was fun most of the time.

I got pretty high marks for knowledge of language, culture, and assessment.  The last one sort of surprised me; I keep trying to re-vamp my tests to they test what I want the students to know, but I don't think I'm there yet.  One student wasn't fooled.  S/he gave me generally high marks, except when it came to assessment. 

The students all think I know Spanish really well, which is good, because I do.  I feel like I'm sort of cheating putting that question on there in order to make myself feel better.  (Not that I feel bad, but I knew I was going to score 4 or better in that question.)  But if I don't ask it, how will I know if my students don't believe I can speak Spanish? 

Here's the takeaway: I know my stuff, but I'm not connecting with the students in a way they understand.  Some of that may just be the nature of trying to connect with them in a language they don't speak, but connecting with students is a good goal to work towards.

iPad Apps to investigate further

Not a lot of processing in this post, just a place to put some links where I can find them later. It looks like our school will have a small number of iPads for students to use or for teachers to use in class, so big chunks of this summer will be spent trying to use the resources that will provide for us.  (What an awful sentence that was.)

Ed Tech Teacher compiled a list of iPad apps, organized by learning tasks, called "iPad as...".

Richard Byrne directs his readers to an app called GoClass, which might have some interesting useability.

The simple brilliance...

I don't even know where to start. 

In the research science world, it is not uncommon to write articles, even whole books, that the authors fully expect maybe 30 people to read.  My seniors' research papers on capital punishment were read by more people than that.  They do it because it's important to increase the body of human knowledge.  And who knows?  It may turn out that your obsessive attention to mating strategies in prarie grass will be the thing that saves the earth from extinction; it's been the premise of many an action flick.

The Ig Nobel awards are given to scientists who make people laugh, then make people think.  In a world with titles that stretch on forever, giving precise summaries of the article to the few people who can understand them, it's easy to forget that the profound can also be funny. 

This is all a run-up to the most useful piece of self-improvement advice I've seen since Gimli's "Breathe" speech from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.  The 2011 Ig Nobel award for Literature went to John Perry of Stanford University on his article, "How to procrastinate and still get things done."  (Chronicle of Higher Education 1996). In it, he lays out the principles of structured procrastination.  The key tenent of this idea, and the life-changing (or possibly life-reaffirming) concept, is simple: "the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely, and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important."

With nothing further to add, I will leave you to comtemplate the wisdom, as I go search for something less important to do.

Rome wasn't built in a day

So...this looks awesome.

"ORBIS is Stanford University's Geospatial Network Model of the Roman Empire."  It will help students understand the geography of the Roman Empire better than the Romans did.

h/t Free Technology for Teachers.  

New dream

To drive the 30,000 miles on the Pan-American Highway, from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Ushuaia, Argentina, or possibly in the other direction.

By dream, of course, I mean "thing I will never do, even if given the opportunity.  Because if given that opportunity, I will have much better opportunities available to me."

An easier way of getting voice mails?

So I'd like to have my students do more one-way speaking.  In fact, that's one of my major pushes for tech development in my classroom.  Students have all of these cell phones and whatnot; can't I use them to have students leave me messages?

There are a variety of tools available, but for a variety of reasons, all of them are clunkier than I would like.  Maybe SpeakPipe is the answer.  One embeds the app into one's blog, and hey presto, one is collecting voice mails from people who visit the blog.

It doesn't look like it would work like a voice mail box, like I was thinking at the beginning of this post.  (Ah, I was so young and foolish then!)  But a computer with a mic would allow a student to leave a message.  Hmm...Now all I need is more mics.  As always.

h/t Free Tech for Teachers.

I should be a game designer

Well, I shouldn't: as Carrie says, "You have no follow-through."  But the power of games to teach us complicated concepts, critical thinking skills, and cost-benefit analysis, to name three things, is amazing.  Check this out:

http://www.ted.com/talks/brenda_brathwaite_gaming_for_understanding.html

She designed a game to teach her mixed-heritage daughter about the slave trade.  And that's just the beginning.