So, You Say “KISS the Students” This Fall? Then “KISS the Teachers” TOO! (A Comment)

Time to go back to school!
Naomi’s Photos

Three days until school begins.

If I hear another recommendation for a “really great Edtech Tool” that happens to be “just what I need to help me go back to school in the new reality of a pandemic”, I will SCREAM!

“Scream” virtually, that is. I don’t scream – I write blog posts.

I have no doubt at all that many of these recommendations are excellent and teachers find them helpful. Educators around the globe are doing their best to be helpful and share everything they know and I’m truly grateful.

But whoa, slow down.

I can’t “digest” that much.

Going back to school this year is particularly stressful with all the Covid-19 safety precautions. I already have a number of Edtech Tools up and ready to roll and am going to focus on making the most out of using them with the students. Overload is a danger – I feel the need to keep it simple and straightforward.

So don’t talk to me about “EdTech”.

Give me a break!
Naomi’s Photos

Yesterday I let my guard down and Adele Raemer’s emphatic recommendation to listen to a podcast with the currently intimidating title of  ” 8 Tips for Teaching Online, from House of #EdTech” sailed through my barricades.  In my defense, I must point out that we’re talking about Adele Raemer, who chose to write the following on the welcome page of her popular YouTube Channel  “Digitally Yours”: “Take things at your own pace. Learn what you need, when you need it”.  My kind of message!

Okay, okay, I also listened to the podcast because I had a lot of boring housework to do –  timing is everything…

So,  what was one of the things that Christopher Nesi from House of #EdTech said?

Christopher Nesi said: “KISS the students”  – Keep It Simple, Silly!!!

As far as I’m concerned, everything he discussed related to the content of the lesson itself holds true regarding the tools used for blended learning or online learning  – keep it simple! A small number of tools that both the students AND the teachers can master well may prove to be more effective. It will certainly improve the teacher’s level of “sanity”. KISS the students and the teachers too!  Hey, “sane” starts with the letter “s” too – maybe we should add it to a teacher’s version!


Naomi’s Photos

I’ll leave you with one more thing Christopher Nesi talked about:

“Walk in your students’ shoes”.

While we can never really walk in another person’s shoes, now is a good time to think about what I do know about where my students are “really from”.

Forgive my reposting – now is the right time for it.

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My students spill out of taxi cabs each morning, rubbing their sleepy eyes after early morning pick-ups, napping or texting through the traffic jams on the long way to school.

Some are from homes where no one gets up before they do,  to see that they leave without breakfast and have packed nothing but party snacks in their school bag for the long day…

Others are from big hugs and best wishes for their day at school, armed with the knowledge that someone is interested in knowing how the day turns out.

They are from blindingly new cell phones, complete with accessories, screens lighting up their lives, from shame masked by annoyance at teachers who insist on such unattainable things otherwise known as pencils and schoolbooks, knowing notes to parents will go unheeded.

Some are from a lifetime of dodging communication pitfalls, guessing meaning from partially heard sentences, tiring easily by the necessity of being constantly alert, at home and at school. From relief at coming to a school where they are no longer the only student with a hearing aid in the entire school – always conspicuous, sure that whispered conversations are about them.

Are you listening?
Naomi’s Photos

Others are from a world full of hands in motion, sailing confidently in a sea of visual vocabulary from birth, signing their pride to be Deaf and their frustration with the world which doesn’t use Sign Langauge, while resenting school organized efforts to create shared experiences between hearing and Deaf peers.

Teenage students of mine come from long trips abroad with their parents during the school year, from dealing with the anger of the same parents for then doing poorly at school, while trusting these parents to bully their teachers into forgetting about the missed material, evading the demand for buckling down.

Adolescent students of mine are from dependence on parents to navigate the world for them, from apron strings tied with double knots, cell phones bridging the distance, tightening the knots that need to be loosened.

My students are from a belief that I always                                                               know where they are really from.

Day in, day out, I give it my best shot.

 

Where are YOUR students really from?

Originally posted here: https://visualisingideas.edublogs.org/2020/01/04/where-are-my-students-really-from/

 

 

 

 

The Right Book at the Right Time! “Meet Me at the Museum” by Youngson

JOY!
Naomi’s Photos
Many thanks to Vicky Loras for recommending this book!

Let me begin this post by making one point crystal clear:

I really really enjoyed reading this book.

I’m still thinking about it.

I’m glad it isn’t a library book (I purchased it on sale on one of the Kindle deals) because it’s a book I can see myself wanting to read again.

That’s something I don’t often say about a work of fiction. However, this book is about more than the barebones of its plot.

Plot? Since I’ve mentioned the plot,  I’d like to emphasize that I’m going to share very little of the plot in this post. I was in the blessed situation of not remembering a thing about the book beyond the fact that Vicky Loras recommended it (I’ve enjoyed the various books from different genres she recommended in the past so that was meaningful) and so every detail was new to me.

This book is an epistolary novel. That’s a word I would probably not use in a conversation as I don’t like a term describing something I  enjoy, reading books in the form of letters, that sounds like the word pistol. I’m very interested in non-fiction collections of letters as well. I find that people who invest in letter writing, see writing as a way to work out their thoughts and feelings.  Writing can help define but also face things.  I believe writing also encourages mindfulness as the desire to make another person understand often leads to noticing little details.

This is the situation in the book. Two people (old enough to be grandparents) who seem to have absolutely nothing in common, strike up a correspondence. He is an introverted, conservative Danish archeologist at a museum and she is an energetic British woman playing a significant part in running the family farm. A woman with very little free time. As you can imagine, the correspondence becomes very meaningful to them both.

When I read the first letter I was concerned that the book would descend into “cuteness” (Kitch” or “Shmaltz”) but I didn’t find it to be that way at all.  Perhaps I found the age of the characters to be something I could relate to, as they thought about their adult children.

In short, it was a great read for me at a time when I’m on vacation, stressed about the pandemic situation and find reflecting, noticing the little details of life, to be something I’m pleased to think about.

Enjoy!

All I Wanted was to Create a Glossary, yet I Found Myself Embarking on a Journey!

Not quite what you expect to see… Naomi’s Photos

Additional Title: When I’m creating content on the computer and my students are using a cell phone…

I have no idea how often I’ll be meeting my students in person at school at the beginning of this year or teaching them online. I’m not sure anyone knows at the moment. My best bet for creating new materials seems to be creating ones that can be printed out and used in class or used online. Having something ready comforts me a bit amidst all this uncertainty.

Therefore I’ve decided that it would be very helpful for me to begin the school year with some texts that are divided into chunks and include glossaries. I have found that struggling learners also appreciate having the text in a “box” and, in cases of multiple-choice questions, having the question above the distractors underlined.

Part One – Creating the Glossary

Just like any student, I DID remember that I had once learned how to create a glossary, but many years have passed since then and I had no idea how to do it.

It turns out that creating a glossary in WORD is very easy. Here is a close-up of part of a text and the glossary: (Note: instructions for creating a glossary can be found at the end of this post along with downloadable files of this particular text).

Looks really respectable right? Not a messy jumble of words in a box under the text!

Part Two – The OOOH Discovery

I was totally taken by surprise when I accidentally discovered that once the glossary was created, hovering with your mouse over the word brings up the glossed translation without you having to shift your gaze to the bottom of the page! Having the translation appear above the word as you read is far less disruptive to the flow of reading!

It looks like this (note the little text box above the word):

 

Isn’t that convenient?

I was very excited! I was sure that once my students learned how to take advantage of this they would appreciate this feature. I do not recall ever hearing about this in any Ed-Tech talks I have attended.

Clouds Set In… Naomi’s Photos
Part Three – The First OH NO! Discovery

As I always do with any worksheet that I create and share with students and other teachers, I saved the document as a PDF. It’s a common practice used to avoid having your students mess up the text as they are working on it.

POOFF!

That cool feature of the glossed items hovering above the text that we’ve been discussing? It disappeared completely. 

The feature does not work when saved as a PDF document.

Part Four – The Second OH NO! Discovery

I asked myself – how often have I seen students ruin or erase part of the digital text they were working on? The only relevant experience I’ve had is when students used to work on the classroom computer. Almost all my worksheets on these computers have remained in WORD and I’ve had very few cases of students accidentally erasing the exercise or distorting the text.  Since the originals are saved it has never been “an issue”.

So…

I decided to try using a WORD document with the students, without saving it as a PDF file.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity to try it out with two students who came to school for the second round of national exams that we had recently.

When they opened the document on their cell phones, not only did the “cool feature” not work, the entire glossary disappeared! No little numbers and words on the bottom of the page at all.

Sad.

The glossary looked great on the students’ cell-phones when I sent it to them as a PDF file.

Looking at the situation…
Naomi’s Photos
Part Five – Current Plans

My original goal was to have a text with a respectable glossary that would be clear on whatever device the students are using. That goal has been achieved.

I will save the WORD version of the worksheets on the classroom computers. The students do not have WORD installed on their phones but the classroom computers most certainly do. At least those who work in class will benefit from the extra features.

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How to add a glossary to a worksheet
  1. Highlight the word you want to gloss and copy it.
  2. Go to the top of the page, above your toolbar, and look for the option “References”. Click on it.
  3. Click on “insert footnote”. A little number below a line will appear at the bottom of the page. It begins very low on the page but as you add more words it all moves up.
  4. Paste the word you copied. Then type in the gloss beside it.
  5. Be pleased!
Module C Summer “Bagrut” Exam, 2019, divided into chunks with a glossary

Module C Bagrut Kindness Part Four PDF

Module C Bagrut Kindness Part One PDF

Module C Bagrut Kindness Part Three PDF

Module C Bagrut Kindness Part Two PDF

 

 

 

 

 

A Multiple Book Post: Atwood, See, Buck, Luiselli and Yedlin

Mickey the Cactus
Naomi’s Photos

I’ve read so many books in the last month or so and each one actually deserves their own post, but that has become too large a task to handle. I actually even considered not writing about the books at all but I can’t do that – this blog is my memory aid! I’m the kind of person who remembers all kinds of details about a book but cannot remember the title of the book. Since my blog dates to Dec. 2010 I’ve often used the search function to check something about a book (like the answer to the question – which of Orhan Pamuk’s books with a name of a color in the title have I read?).

So here are super short comments about many books, in no particular order:

The Island of the Sea Women by Lisa See

I just finished the book last night. I read most of it in just a few days – it’s very hard to put down. I second what many of my friends have said – a fascinating book about strong women in an unusual social situation (men are unaccustomed to physical labor – women do EVERYTHING yet their status is still lower than men) living through turbulent times on an Island in Korea.  The women traditionally made a living by deep-sea diving without oxygen tanks or protective gear.  Frankly, I’m the kind of nerd who would have been fascinated by the story just with these aspects, and think the book would have been just as good with the two main characters remaining friends throughout the years and we learned of the change the new generations brought about – but I know that’s just me.

A GOOD BOOK!

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

For me this was a “companion book” to The Handmaid’s Tale, filling in missing gaps, but thankfully not delivering the same “punch to the gut” that the previous book did, as the vital information is already known. It explains things in more detail.

Atwood’s writing is, as always, a pleasure and I’m so glad the LIBBY library service had the audiobook! There are several different readers and Margaret Atwood herself reading little bits of it too! Having several readers adds to the experience.

A GOOD BOOK! Only to be read after The Handmaid’s Tale.

Peony by Pearl Buck

I haven’t read a book by Pearl Buck since I was a teenager! Back then I read both The Good Earth and Letter From Peking.  The pace is slow, unrushed, but I was interested in the details. The book is told from the point of view of Peony, a beautiful and intelligent Chinese bond-maid who belonged to a Jewish family in Kaifeng, China, in 1850. The impossible love story between Peony and David, (the family’s son)  is told on a backdrop of the family’s conflicted reactions to the gradual disappearance of the small Jewish community and its assimilation into the welcoming Chinese society.

The kIndle edition comes with a FASCINATING afterword written by a researcher who shows how cleverly Buck used the known facts about the community that was once there to bring the story to life. The researcher then adds information that was not available to Buck and presents surprising information about the descendants and research regarding the community from 1850 till the present day.

INTERESTING!

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

The truly unusual writing style and the skill in which the story is told kept me engrossed even though I found reading the book deeply upsetting. It’s all so visually clear and the punch is strong – the things that have happened to immigrant children traveling alone across the Mexican American Border is as tragic as I understood it to be from the media. The way in which the crises is related, the approach to it, is from such an expected angle and from unexpected points of view that reading the book is truly an experience, but a heart wrenching one.

I was glad I had read it but glad when I finished it too.

Stockholm by Noa Yedlin

I’m sure this book will be translated into English soon – the television adaption of the book has been very successful.

While at times the book can be too slow, it is mostly an enjoyable comic/drama with truly clever twists and great portrayals of people and their complex relationships.  The reader is introduced to five 70-year-old people who have been friends at least since their 20s.  When one of them suddenly passes away quietly at home, the others try to hide the fact for almost a week, since the newly deceased character was “shortlisted ” for a Nobel Prize in Economics. A person has to be alive when the prize is announced in order to get it (though not necessarily for the ceremony itself). As you can imagine (with a whole lot you might not be able to imagine on your own) hiding a dead body leads to unexpected complications… These situations naturally cause the characters to examine their relationship with the others in the group and look at themselves.