Protecting Reputations Online: A Lesson to Share and Then Create

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of social media and I've certainly made my own Faux Pas in the online world but I'm always surprised when I see a perfectly intelligent person who has posted something that clearly may come back to bite them. Whether it be an inappropriate comment or a photo or a link to a hate group, I'm not sure people truly understand that what they post online is there in perpetuity; even if they take it down.

Education needs to begin early and should be ongoing. As with all schooling, it can't be boring and preachy. It needs to be engaging, quick and most of all DIFFERENT! Take this video from Common Craft:




What if all middle and high school students had to watch this and then form groups of 3 or 4 and create their own similar video (or just stage it) to share their own story of caution for younger students?

Although my 4th grade students didn't create videos of taking care of reputations online, they did use this method to create science videos. Take a peek to see how it can easily be done (well, not nearly as well as Common Craft's Lee and Sachi LeFever) but my students will never forget the concepts or the experience.

What are your thoughts?

My Thoughts and Predictions on Grading Parents

Florida State Representative, Kelli Stargel filed a bill last week that would require elementary school teachers (grades K-3) to assess parents on the quality of their involvement in their children's education. They would be scored on how they respond to items such as how well their children complete their homework, their children's attendance and whether they attend or respond to requests for meetings.

Parents will also be graded on children's physical preparation for school including a good night's sleep and appropriate meals. These grades would appear on the children's report card.

Certainly nobody can argue the facts that strong, appropriate parental involvement, good attendance, a good night's sleep and healthy eating all positively impact children's educational well-being. However, the idea of teachers grading the parents is a waste of teachers' time and antagonistic, not to mention bizarre!

We've seen less strange bills pass though, and if this bill should actually pass, I can only imagine what would occur. Keeping in mind that teachers are typically not allowed to make too many decisions on their own anymore, the following will most likely be necessary:

• Tedious scoring guides, rubrics and professional development to understand them will be required of teachers in order to be properly prepared to assess parents. After all, who are teachers to know what proper attendance of students actually looks like? Why would teachers actually know if parents are responding to communication? Proper professional development in these areas would be crucial. On a positive note, more jobs would be created as there will be a need for a special department for this at the state and district levels.
• There will certainly need to be some "warning" system such as a progress report to let parents know they are in "danger" of receiving a low score. Not sure who will need to sign to be sure it was received, perhaps the grandparents. 
• At some point, the state will tie the parental scores into school grades and so there will need to be some system of intervention and accountability in order to be sure that no parent is left behind.
• NPLB will ensure that every parent's individual goals are tied to each student's individual goals, thus creating measurable objectives to be assessed before any grade can be administered. Again, more jobs created as programming for state departments of assessment and accountability will need to now include data systems for NPLB.
• Since there must be some differentiation, teachers of K-3 will be free to offer a limited series of credits and demerits to parents based on behaviors, for example:
  
• +5 points = parent responds to emails and phone calls from teachers within 24 hours.
• -1 point = for every day parent does not respond to email and phone from teacher.
• -10 points = parent blocks school number on cellphone.
  
• +5 points = parents assists child with homework.
• -5 points = parent does homework for child.
• -10 points = parent does homework for child AND uses own handwriting.
  
• +5 points = parent sends in notes to teacher if student is experiencing difficulty with a subject and thinks teacher may be unaware.
• -5 points = parent send in note to teacher if student is experiencing difficulty with a subject and accuses the teacher of not teaching it.
  
• -10 points = same parents simply calls the principal without discussing with teacher first.
• +5 points = parent offers to help out at school or in some way from home.
• -10 points = parent offers to help out at school, comes in, then reports back to other parents all of her "observations" in class; including details of other students' behaviors.
  
• +5 points = parent makes sure student has all necessary supplies or reaches out to teacher to request assistance.
• -5 points = parent allows students to do without necessary supplies with no communication to teacher.
  
• +5 points= parent shows up for scheduled conference
• -2 points=parent shows up for scheduled conference late leaving only a few minutes to chat
• -10 points= parent shows up unannounced for conference and is visibly upset when told teacher is not available.
  
• +5 points = parent respectfully asks teacher if moving their child's seat might be beneficial if they feel they are being distracted by other students.
• -5 points = for each additional time parent requests seat change for same reason.
• +10 points = parent finally admits own child is also distracting others and seat placement is not the issue.

These are just a few as I'm sure when committees begin forming there will be many more suggestions floating around. I'm "sure" this bill will make education a whole lot better.

What are your thoughts? Good idea or no?

This post contains partial satire. Thank you to Paula White for the reminder to include this bit of important information in my post.

Announcing The Winner of The Infocus Interactive Projector

As many of you know, I recently ran a contest to give away a brand-new, full featured and very robust Infocus interactive projector.  I do want to say that choosing the winner was much harder than I thought it would be. All of the participants shared fantastic ideas that not only showed how they would use the projector but also how they'd incorporate the content from Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers. The comments that really stood out were the ones where the teachers shared project-based learning activities they would plan for/with their students and described how they and their students would also interact with the projector.

I simply couldn't make the decision myself. I reached out to a few of my friends for some conversation and I want to send huge thanks to my very good friend Sue H., whose expertise as a smart, creative, and loving classroom teacher made her a perfect judge for this contest. I also want to thank Tom Miller, producer for Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers (and quickly becoming a good friend of mine as well).

After much thought and discussion, I made the final decision. At this point, there is no doubt that Shannon Walters aka Shannonthelibrarian (@shannonwa on Twitter) is well deserving and will soon have a brand new InFocus IN3900 series projector delivered to her door! The projector will provide Shannon with an easy and exciting way to build on the science lessons she shared in her comment at the post.

Congratulations Shannon!

Thank you to all who entered. Stay tuned for a special guest blog post from Tom Miller from Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers. He may have something up his lab coat sleeve for my readers!