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Infographic: Technology in Schools

August 21, 2012 · by · 7 Comments
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With kids around the country heading back to school, SodaHead.com, the web’s largest opinion-based community, asked its users about their thoughts on technology being used in schools, including when tablets and laptops should be allowed, thoughts on cell phones/texting in class and the potential change over to e-Books. In addition, the poll asked respondents about their favorite and least favorite subjects in school and their opinions on the importance of a college education for getting a job.

The survey results are posted below in infographic form – scroll down below the graphic for the text of the results:

Table for Five Infographic Technology in Schools

LAPTOPS:
The majority of respondents feel that laptops should not be allowed in school until high school. 18 percent think it’s OK for laptops to be used in elementary school, 25 percent feel they should be allowed in middle school, 33 percent are OK with laptops being introduced in high school, while 18 percent think that students should wait until college to use laptops. Only 7 percent feel that laptops should not be used at all in an educational setting.

TABLETS:
Regarding tablet use in school, the results were very similar. 17 percent are OK if kids use tablets in elementary school, 20 percent think that kids should wait until middle school to use tablets, while 31 percent feel that high school is the right setting to introduce tablets in the classroom. 19 percent feel that students should wait until college to use tablets in class, while 13 percent don’t think it is ever appropriate for tablets to be used in class.

TEXTING AND CELL PHONES:
In terms of texting in class, only 18 percent think this is OK, while 53 percent feel it is not OK and 29 percent feel that texting should only be allowed in case of emergency. Regarding whether cell phones should be outright banned in school, 28 percent said yes; 41 percent said no, but that they should be turned off; and 25 percent said they should not be banned because sometimes it is a necessity.

SHOULD EBOOKS REPLACE TEXT BOOKS?:
With e-Books gaining popularity, the public is still hesitant to make textbooks digital, but there are signs of a gradual shift. While 36 percent don’t want to shift to e-books in the classroom, 28 percent are for the switch, while 36 percent are ready for e-books to be in some classes.

FAVORITE AND LEAST FAVORITE HIGH SCHOOL CLASSES:
The poll also asked about respondents favorite and least favorite high school classes. English took the title of favorite class with 22 percent of the vote, followed by history at 21 percent and science at 18 percent. The least favorite class was overwhelmingly math with 40 percent of the vote, followed by physical education at 17 percent and English at 16 percent.

IMPORTANCE OF COLLEGE FOR GETTING A JOB:
The poll also asked respondents if they thought college was important to secure a good job. While 70 percent of high school students and 74 percent of college students do feel college is important to get a good job, only 50 percent of full time workers and 48 percent of those that were unemployed felt that college was important for getting a job.

Full details of the poll are available at: http://www.sodahead.com/survey/featured/school-survey/?results=1

Thanks to SodaHead for the content! No compensation was received.

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Friday Fives – Five Things That Make Me Happy

June 8, 2012 · by · 4 Comments
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Welcome to Friday Fives, the weekly meme where I post a list of five anythings! This week, I’m making myself think of five things that make me happy because I had a bad day yesterday and want to embrace the positives.  Feel free to play along with Friday Fives by posting your own list on your blog, on your Facebook wall, your Google + stream, on Twitter – or even by leaving your list in my comments!

friday fives meme on table for five

FIVE THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY TODAY:

 

1. My real-life and Facebook friends. I had a bad day yesterday, starting with a huge fight with my husband and ending with the realization that I had FORGOT that I agreed to co-host a Twitter party with Megan Calhoun of SocialMoms on behalf of Together Counts. I was devastated.  I posted about it on Facebook (a/k/a my personal therapist) and had 19 friends, most of whom I personally know, shower me with all kinds of lovely and kind words. It was like getting a big group hug, and there’s no feeling like knowing that YOU ARE NOT ALONE.  And also? That you aren’t the only one that occasionally f*cks up. So once again, thank you thank you THANK YOU all my wonderful friends.

2. International Delight Iced Mocha, which I discovered when an opportunity came up to review it through Collective Bias/Social Fabric. If you are a fan of those fancy iced coffee drinks at coffee places and take-out restaurants that cost four or five dollars each, you really need to head to Meijer or Walmart or Kroger (put in your zip code at http://www.internationaldelight.com/Where-To-Buy to find stores close to you) and pick up Original, Vanilla or Mocha. It’s $3.99 for half a gallon which is eight servings! Sorry Biggby Coffee, Starbucks,  and McDonalds, but I’m on a budget and quite frankly, International Delight’s Iced Mocha tastes EXACTLY THE SAME AS YOURS.  p.s. posting this is not part of the compensated campaign I’m doing for CB. I swear.

3. My daughter teaching herself to tie her shoes. Kaitlyn requested her first pair of “shoes that tie” a couple of months ago, and as Chris or I tied them for her in the morning, we explained step-by-step what we were doing. And then about two weeks ago, she came running up to the front door off the bus and said “Mom, guess what? I tied my own shoes today!”  She decided she was going to do it by herself and so she just put her mind to it and did it.  Her feet did one of those I-swear-they-grew-overnight things that kids’ feet do and yesterday I realized she had little red marks on the tops of all her toes where the shoes were rubbing, so last night we stopped in at Payless and she requested “shoes that will help me run fast AND that tie.” No more velcro for my girl!

4. My kids finishing up Freshman year, Seventh grade, and Kindergarten having kicked butt in all their classes.  Ryan has a 3.89 GPA that would have been higher but he chose to take Sophomore math instead of Freshman math. And I am very happy with 3.89!  And Nathan, my sweet son with the math learning disability, is getting a B+ in Math, a B in Science, and A’s in everything else!  Kaitlyn was a model kindergartener, and loves school so much that when her teacher told the kids to practice math, reading, spelling and writing over the summer, she set up a “desk” in the playroom by turning a big cardboard box upside down and setting out paper, crayons and markers. She’ll probably know all the 1st grade skills before the new school year even starts. We always end the school year by going out for ice cream, and I am happily spending that money because all three of them deserve it!

5. New seasons of some of my favorite TV shows. Summer used to mean endless reruns of sitcoms and not much else, but thanks to cable, networks like HBO, TNT, and USA now have shows that start in the summer, and there are some really good ones. Last week’s Friday Fives was Five TV Shows I’ll Be Watching This Summer, all but True Blood had their season premieres this past week, and I was once again reminded why I love summer TV! One show I didn’t have room for in that post was Franklin & Bash, which airs Tuesdays at 10 eastern on TNT. Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer play old friends and lawyers who will do anything to represent their clients, while also being hilariously funny and sometimes naughty, not to mention gorgeous. I have had a huge crush on Breckin ever since “Clueless”, and he just gets hotter every year. Mark-Paul’s not too bad either. Malcom McDowell plays the head of the law firm they technically work for and he’s brilliant. A good hour of TV makes me happy, six good hours of TV a week makes me even happier :)

So there you have it, this week’s Friday Fives. Have a great weekend everybody!

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Wordless Wednesday – Kaitlyn’s Whiteboard Art

June 5, 2012 · by · 16 Comments
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Welcome to Wordless Wednesday, the weekly blog meme for showcasing your photos. At the end of the post after the photos is a linky where you can leave the URL to your Wordless Wed. post.  Comments are definitely welcome!  I’ll visit everyone who leaves their URL in the linky and/or leaves a comment, it’s a great way for me to get to know my fellow bloggers!

This week’s photos are of the big whiteboard Kaitlyn draws on. Lately she’s been playing school by setting up a row of baby dolls against a box, facing the board, and then copying the “Writer’s Workshop” assignment from that morning. These are recent favorites of mine:

markerboard art things that go table for five

 

markerboard art class learning table for five

 

markerboard art three little pigs table for five

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(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday 2-1-12 – Kaitlyn The Teacher

February 1, 2012 · by · 21 Comments
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Chris brought home a huge dry erase board someone at work didn’t want anymore. Kaitlyn LOVES it.

Lately she’s been setting up a “class” made up of her toys, usually a bunch of Squinkies lined up facing the board. Then, she writes the “lessons” on the board!


 
Link up your Wordless Wednesday posts here:

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Wordless Wednesday – First Days of School 2010

September 8, 2010 · by · 23 Comments
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Why Nathan is having his Best Year Ever

October 8, 2009 · by · 14 Comments
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Last night was Nathan’s parent/teacher conference, and Chris and I were worried.  Last year was such a bad year for him, with a teacher who only saw his negative qualities and blamed us for everything he struggled with.  He matured a lot over the summer, but once school started, we began to see some of the same behavior as last year. Like, not bringing home his assignment book, even though there’s a specific routine for getting the assignment book filled out and into backpacks. We were getting so frustrated at him for forgetting.

I haven’t told you about Nathan’s teacher.  Our 5th and 6th grades are an Intermediate school, moving the kids from the single-classroom setting of elementary and preparing them for the multiple-class setting of  Middle School (7th and 8th grades, where Ryan is).  Teachers work in pairs, with one acting as the “home base” teacher.  One teacher covers Math & Science, the other does Social Studies & Language Arts.  Nathan has the same team of teachers that Ryan did (we’re not sure if that’s a coincidence or not) except Nathan has the opposite teacher for home base that Ryan had.  And let me tell you about Nathan’s teacher, because we could not have asked for a better classroom.

Nathan’s teacher is Bill Cecil, the Michigan Teacher of the Year for 2003-2004. He spent that Sabbatical year developing a program and writing a book called “Best Year Ever!“.  Mr. Cecil not only has devoted himself to helping new teachers learn to succeed in their classrooms, he also helps each of his students have their Best Year Ever as well.  He asks his students to try their best, to respect him and each other, to bring a positive attitude to class, to learn from their mistakes.  He is one of the most energizing, motivating, caring teachers I have ever met.  When I got the letter over the summer that he would be Nathan’s teacher, I literally jumped off the couch and yelled YES!  I just knew that with Mr. Cecil guiding him, Nathan was going to have an incredible school year.

What we heard at the conference last night was that Nathan is a great student.  Mr. Cecil did not say one negative thing about Nathan. He didn’t say “Nathan can’t do this”, he said, “this is an issue for Nathan”. It was such a relief to not feel like the teacher was blaming us, like last year.  And, some of the things that last year’s classroom teacher and resource teacher told us to do? Mr. Cecil and this year’s resource teacher are saying no, no, that just makes it harder for him.

Last year’s teacher told us that Nathan absolutely had to learn the multiplication tables, had to be able to calculate each fact, no memorizing. We’ve been trying to teach him the multiplication tables for three years!  A math learning disability means it’s HARD FOR HIM, something last year’s teacher just didn’t seem to care about.  Mr. Cecil made this awesome suggestion to use flashcards, and if Nathan gets stuck on an answer, just tell him the answer and move on. Here we’ve been so hard on him about learning the facts, and then we get told it’s okay for him to memorize them!

His resource teacher called Nathan “a very bright kid”, and Mr. Cecil said that Nathan is going to be very successful in life. Do you know how good it is to hear that?  We were so worried that he wasn’t doing his homework, that he was blowing off assignments, but it turns out, Nathan is really trying his best every day.  As we walked out of the school, I told Chris I was stopping at the store for ice cream, because Nathan deserved a reward for getting such a great report. And then I came home and hugged and smooched him and made sure Ryan and Kaitlyn knew that they were getting ice cream because Nathan had earned it and was sharing.  It was all about Nathan. I think it’s going to be a great year for all of us.

Smiling Nathan

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Backing Off Is Hard To Do

September 4, 2009 · by · 8 Comments
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This past Wednesday, I took Ryan to 7th grade orientation at the middle school he will attend for the next two years.  The reason for the evening was to give new students their class schedules, a map of the building, have them learn to open their locker, find their classrooms and meet their teachers.

I found myself having a really hard time taking a step back and letting Ryan learn for himself.

After we got his class schedule, the map, and a bunch of other papers, I went into this weird Mom mode where I wanted to show him how to find his locker, how to open it, how to get to his classes, rather than letting HIM figure it all out, which is what he’s going to have to do starting next Tuesday anyway.

I found myself introducing myself to his teachers first, and then him, as if what was important was that they meet ME, not the young man they’ll be teaching for the next 180 days.

Good gods, when his history teacher mentioned that he had a class website and a BLOG, I turned into some kind of weird show-off. I actually said, loud enough for 3 or 4 other parents to hear, “you have a blog? Dude!”. No, I really did. And then I walked over to him, pulled a business card out of my purse, and said “I have three blogs!”  What kind of contest was I hoping to win? Was I thinking that I would, you know, BOND with this guy over our mutual knowledge of WordPress and therefore secure my son some kind of better position in the class?

When the Principal announced during the pre-walking around meeting in the gym that there would be a dance coming up next month, I got excited. My son? Not so much. I said “you should go to the dance, it’s a great way to meet other people in your class and you know, girls like going to dances.”  To which my son replied “I’m not going to a dance, Mom.”

I have to let my son be who he is going to be. He is not me. I was a social butterfly in school, he prefers his small group of friends. I went to dances and rollerskating parties and had my first boyfriend in the 6th grade.  He likes chatting with his friends on Xbox Live while they blow each other up playing Halo 2.  And from the few conversations I’ve overheard, none of them are ready for the whole girlfriend thing.

It seems like a hard balance to strike, guiding and shaping a child’s life while also giving them space to grow in their own way.

One thing is for sure- I won’t be emailing blogging tips to Ryan’s History teacher. Hopefully I’ll be over the embarrassment by conferences.

Ryan Profile

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A Love Letter from My Son

November 17, 2005 · by · 4 Comments
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Nathan brought this home from school the other day. I remembered it after reading a post at Jenny’s site about letters her kids wrote her.

Imagine a sheet of paper with a picture of a house, a Mommy (who is not pregnant oddly enough) with two teeth and curly brown hair ( mine is blonde and straight) and a little boy with three sharp pointy teeth. Underneath are these words:

I love mi Mom ( I love my Mom )
Vare muth ( Very much)
and I lov hr ( and I love her)
vare muce (Very much)

My heart was a goopy puddle after reading that.

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