Apace of Change

If you are a regular visitor to this blog, perhaps you’ve noticed a new tab on the upper-right-hand side menu: Teaching Materials.  I’ve decided that it would be a shame if the lesson plans, projects, activities, and related materials I created over eight years of teaching were to just sit on my hard drive and rot.  Over the next few days, I will be uploading my entire “stash” to DivShare, a free file-hosting site.  Once everything is up, I’ll write some descriptions and post links to folders for each course I taught over the last eight years.  Furthermore, all my work will be licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC, which allows you to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work (in fact, please adapt and make it better!), but not for commercial purposes.  Also, if you do use any of my stuff other than in your classroom (e.g., on the Web), a link back to me would be most appreciated!

So far, I’ve got my stuff from two of six courses up (seven courses really, but I’m combining materials for the Honors and non-Honors Brit Lit courses).  I’ll post an update here once all the materials are up.

Enjoy!

The strangest, albeit pretty wonderful, thing happened to me the other day.  I was helping clean up from dinner when my cell phone rang.  When my wife answered and then handed it to me, the Caller ID gave a Texas number.  I know very few people in Texas, and this number didn’t belong to any of them, so my next thought was “telemarketer” - I usually just hang up on those, but I took the call anyway.

It turns out that an aspiring teacher came across my resume via Google and decided to call me to ask for some advice on resources she could look to in order to prepare for her first year of teaching.  Ten years ago, I would have been freaked beyond words to receive a call out of the blue from a complete stranger, but since I have gone to great lengths to represent myself online, I actually took this as a) very flattering, and b) validation of the concept of networked learning - somebody else was able to increase their knowledge because I have established an online identity and made myself available (besides, it’s not all that different from getting a blog comment or a follow on Twitter from someone you don’t know).

I wasn’t able to talk at the time (between dinner and the kids’ bedtime gets a bit hectic), but she promised to send me her email address, to which I replied later that night.  After some shout-outs to my fellow educators on Twitter, I was able to offer the following advice (this is the truncated version; the real email is much more detailed):

• Read lots of blogs to get a sense of what issues, challenges, and triumphs teachers are experiencing (I forgot to say ‘comment on’ too, but I hope it’s implied; I also supplied some suggested starting points)
• A supportive community/network is important.  Augment the one you’ll have at work by reaching out to other educational professionals on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
• I turned to Kevin Jarrett for some advice on books for someone transitioning from the business world to teaching, and he provided the following list (none of which I’ve read, I’m a bit embarrassed to say):
  • Schools That Learn
  • The First Days of School: How to Be an Effective Teacher
  • Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement
  • Literacy Work Stations: Making Centers Work
  • Mosaic of Thought: Teaching Comprehension in a Reader’s Workshop (this one comes courtesy Nancy Devine)
• Join a national organization that caters to your specific professional interests (I never joined the NCTE as a teacher, but I have been a member of NASP since grad school)

My parting bit of advice was this: you can go through the best teacher prep program, read all the books, blogs, and magazines out there, and go to all the conferences, but so much of how we learn to teach comes from actual classroom experience - OJT!  At least, that’s how it was for me.

What advice could you have benefitted most from when you were just starting out?   Drafting this blog post I can already think of a few things I left out of my original email, but the topic is so vast, it’s hard to get everything in the first go-round.  If she’s reading, what other advice would you offer this soon-to-be teacher?

Back in April I mentioned that I started a feed of my Shared Items in Google Reader for anyone who’s interested in reading the same stuff I am on psychology, special education, technology, etc.  Today I’d like to let you all know that after multiple failed attempts, I think I’ve finally found a use for social bookmarking site Delicious that suits me: I’ve taken all the sites I’ve bookmarked for myself pertaining to special ed, assistive technology, and school psychology and uploaded them to my own Delicious account.

Please feel free to either subscribe to my Delicious RSS feed or just bookmark my page; have a look at the tag list on the right-hand side of the screen for categories that may interest you (e.g., Organization, Reading, Math, ADHD, etc.).  I hope you and your colleagues can find something useful there, for yourselves or your students.

I’m not normally in the habit of recycling previous posts (especially those barely a month old), but I really need some feedback on this from teachers, CST specialists, parents, administrators, students, consultants - really, any stakeholder in the world of special education.  Here’s what I wrote last month:

So every member of my new Child Study Team has some ‘pet project’ that they contribute to the department, and along those lines, I’ve been approached to put together a website for the department (not sure if it’s just for CST or Special Services in general; will get more details in the summer).

[...]

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments here - parents, what info can we make readily available to you?  Special ed teachers/service providers, what “frequently asked questions” or topics would you put on a site for the community?

Although this project is still in the very early stages, I have some thoughts as to what I think needs to go on this site at minimum:

• “plain English” description of the NJ special ed determination process
• downloadable PDFs of NJAC 6:14 (special education code), PRISE (Parental Rights in Special Education), and similar documents
• little blurbs about each of the CST members (4 psychologists, 2 LDTCs, 1 social worker) and our supervisor, along with contact information (phone, email, fax)
• information on transition services and options
• links to useful external sources

I’m not quite at the point of creating a Twitter account for our Child Study Team, but I would like to do something a little more personalized than a static website, like maybe have a monthly blog post from a different CST member (a la a newsletter).  I did create a wiki for the Special Services dept. at my last school as part of my grad school internship project, so I do have a basic blueprint, but given the additional year and a half or so of technical experience I’ve gained since putting that up (plus the fact that I’ll be using locally hosted Wordpress as my canvas), I think I can kick this site up a notch.

So what do YOU think needs to feature on this website?  Sky’s the limit, at least as we kick ideas around in this space.

One of the students on my caseload is autistic, and his teacher tells me he has recently developed a fascination with the fire alarms in our school, particularly with the idea of pulling them.  A fellow psychologist suggested I develop a social story for this young man that explains appropriate fire alarm protocol (for lack of a better description).

Social stories (for those of us too lazy to click a link!) are short illustrated stories designed to teach social skills to students with autism (and similar developmental disabilities).  In a social story, the student will see specific behaviors depicted in concrete terms and learn why they are or are not appropriate (e.g., “hitting other people can hurt them”; “we raise our hand when we need to ask a question”).  I was generally familiar with the concept of social stories, but creating my own gave me a new appreciation for the tool, as well as raised more questions than I was able to answer.

At the suggestion of our CST secretary, I decided to illustrate this social story with pictures taken on our campus.  I don’t know if this holds any water, but I’m hopeful that seeing familiar, local images in the social story will make the message a little more tangible to this young man than clip art or random pictures off the Internet.  The story itself is 8 pages long (including cover) and contains 9 images, of which 3 were obtained from the Internet (1 public domain, 2 licensed under Creative Commons).  The remaining 6 I snapped myself over the course of yesterday and today.

In the spirit of Dan’s repeated calls for critique amongst bloggers, I submit to you my first attempt at a social story.  Because I’m a big sensitive crybaby interested in sharing my thought process with you, here are some issues that are yet unresolved in my mind:

• I had a hard time nailing the language.  Some pages I think are too easy; others, too complex.  I guess appropriateness varies by student, but what little text you see is the result of a number of re-writes, and I’m still not sure I’m entirely happy with the final version.
• Don’t know if the pictures are concrete enough.  Are they too symbolic, especially the last one?
• I wanted to keep the tone positive, but also make sure the student understood the consequences of pulling false alarms.  Like the point above, it’s a fine line to walk between not sugarcoating the issue and not making it too scary.
• The administrative offices picture.  I don’t want the student to think that principal = trouble, but…
• I don’t know if the last page is so contradictory as to be confusing to the target audience.
• I didn’t feel the need to include a page of photo credits in the version I’m giving to the student, nor did I black out the face of the administrator who graciously agreed to pose for me.  This is the “public” version of the document, so I can attribute my photos properly and not put someone’s face on the Internet who never agreed to it.

OK, without further avoidance ado, I present:

Fire Alarms in School - Apace of Change

Just a couple of short notes today (in the style of The Jose Vilson); none of which merit their own blog post:

Feed Me

If you don’t have enough feeds in your RSS reader (and really, who ever has enough?), you can check my Google Reader shared items feed.  This is the same feed or stories that you see in the sidebar at DamianBariexca.net, but you can subscribe to this in your reader of choice.  I try to limit my feed’s focus to psychology, special education, or technology that I think has potential for use in the special ed classroom (and Ira Socol’s SpeEd Change features regularly in my shared items).

Tech Geekery

I spent much of this past weekend playing with my new toy, the Asus EeePC 1000HE.  A few cons, mostly pros, and I will likely be putting up a “Tools of the Trade” post on this machine before the end of the school year.  Bottom line: best $400 I’ve spent recently.

Stop By & Say Hi

If you happen to be in the Jamesburg, NJ area on Friday, May 1, why not attend the NJASP Spring Conference?  Jim Wright, founder of Intervention Central, will be presenting on “Strategies for Working with the Unmotivated, Non-Compliant, Disorganized, Struggling Student” (link to PDF).  I’ll be there, and am considering liveblogging, if I can.  If you’re interested, see the linked PDF above for registration information.

Call for Advice

So every member of my new Child Study Team has some ‘pet project’ that they contribute to the department, and along those lines, I’ve been approached to put together a website for the department (not sure if it’s just for CST or Special Services in general; will get more details in the summer).

My supervisor and I both have some ideas as to what should go on the site, but here’s where I reach out to you: I want to make this site more than just pictures and contact info; at the very least, I want to make it an information repository for students and parents.  What information do you think would be most valuable on a high school CST/Special Services site?  Transition information?  Laws in “plain English”?  Flowcharts of legal processes?  Biographical information about the team/teachers?  A blogroll?  Monthly blog posts/articles?

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments here - parents, what info can we make readily available to you?  Special ed teachers/service providers, what “frequently asked questions” or topics would you put on a site for the community?

A few months ago, I wrote about proposed House Bill 363 in Pennsylvania, which, in its current wording, would effectively ban cell phones and computers in public schools statewide.  I wrote a letter to my local state representative in which I voiced some very specific concerns over the possibility that this bill would become law (I included a copy of my letter in the post linked above).

I actually received a reply from my representative (along with a handwritten note apologizing for the delay in responding).  I won’t quote the letter in its entirety, but the main thrust of her response was this: Rep. Paul Clymer, Republican Chairman of the House Education Committee, plans to introduce legislation in the near future that exempts electronic devices “used for solely educational purposes from the ban in House Bill 363″.  My representative stated that she would support such language.

Well, it’s a step in the right direction, I guess, to correct the semantic flaws in the language of the original bill, but for some reason this still doesn’t sit well with me.  It’s entirely possible that I’m reading too much into this, but I’m getting stuck on “used for solely educational purposes”.  I haven’t seen the language of Rep. Clymer’s bill, but based on this response, it sounds like the only difference is that laptops, netbooks, and digital cameras will no longer be unintentionally excluded; it doesn’t speak at all to the creative implementation of other technologies (e.g., mobile phones) and still, in my interpretation, indicates a lack of faith that individual teachers can appropriately implement technology in their classes (and, in a way, completely absolves them of that responsibility/opportunity).

Like I said, maybe I’m reading too much into this.  I suppose it’s also entirely possible that this law will only be selectively enforced.  Guess we’ll have to see.

After having covered the graphic design (as it were) and written content of my personal digital portfolio, I’d like to wrap up this series with a look at the “Lifestream” portion of DamianBariexca.net.  I guess there was never much debate in my mind over whether or not to meld this (more or less) personal part of my life with the professional.  Since I started blogging and involving myself in educational circles online almost two years ago, I feel like those lines have blurred so much that it felt natural to include this information.

You’ll notice that the headings all follow one of two formats: “What I’m ______” or “Find Me ______”.  The English teacher in me thought it important to have some sort of parallel structure going on to give a sense of cohesion to the lifestream, while still allowing each part to remain separate (no offense, but I’ve always thought those “everything and the kitchen sink” lifestreams a la FriendFeed looked a little too cluttered to be useful).

Find Me Online

I used the DandyID Wordpress plugin to create a “business card” of sorts with link to my other most frequently used online presences (Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Shelfari, and Twitter).  Saw no need to overdo it here with every single account I have; just a “Top 5″ selection (DandyID is required, natch).  Before I got this plugin, I just used text links, but I liked the little icons.  Sue me.

Find Me Offline

Some might not feel comfortable with this (understandably so), but the geek in me just thinks it’s really cool, so I included it.  Richard John developed this plugin to display your last check-in location at BrightKite.  This plugin was a bit raw in that it’s straight-up PHP, but it was good for me to get “under the hood” and learn a little bit about coding in the process (I had to make all the customization tweaks at the code level; no GUI for this plugin).  I appreciated the learning opportunity, and once I figured out how to make it do what I wanted, I was very pleased with the result, not least because it’s the ONLY plugin I found that could do what I wanted with a minimum of fuss, bells, and whistles.  Richard, I’d link ya here, but your website appears to have gone away, along with the location from which I downloaded this plugin.

Find Me On the Go

QuickSMS allows visitors to your site to type a message into the box (as the 160-character counter ticks down a la Twitter) and send you a text message (SMS) without knowing your mobile phone number.  I currently have an unlimited text plan on my phone, so I’m not concerned about racking up charges, but if that ever changes, I may reconsider having this here.  To be perfectly honest, there’s no real good reason for this to be here other than I think it’s cool.  I’ve only received a few texts from this method, all from friendly sources.  Again, if that changes, down comes the box.

What I’m Thinking

Twitter has become such an integral part of my own learning over the last two years that I knew I had to include some reference to my account.  I use Twitter Tools, but there are a ton of similar plugins out there you can use.  I have mine set to omit any “Replies” I may send (messages starting with an @).  I think that, direct conversations notwithstanding, my Twitter stream tends to be a nice mix of professional observations, personal minutae, and links to relevant articles (OK, maybe the picture above isn’t the best representative sample).

What I’m Reading (Offline)

I use Shelfari’s widget (create a Shelfari account for details) to display whatever book I’m currently reading.  Right now, I’m about 200 pages into Moby Dick (and they just got on the boat!).

What I’m Reading (Online)

I’ve really enjoyed using the Shared Items feature of Google Reader to collect and display articles from my RSS feeds I find relevant to psychology and education (general and special).  If I come across an article elsewhere online, the Shareaholic Firefox extension allows me to send that story to my Google Reader Shared Items list with just two clicks.

What I’m Writing

How can I put up a website to represent myself and not mention my own blog?!   I just used the standard Wordpress RSS widget to display items from this blog’s feed.  Visitors can click on any link in the list and be taken directly to that blog post here.  I also sort of “hijacked” the RSS button that the Thesis theme places at the top of the page - and by “hijacked”, I mean “replaced the nonexistent RSS feed from DamianBariexca.net with my blog’s feed”:

Visitors to my site can subscribe to this blog in their reader without even visiting the site.

What’s Next?

I didn’t really think I could spend a whole month on this topic, but here I am, 4 weeks and 7 posts later and all tapped out.  What do I hope to do with this site?  As I mentioned a few posts ago, I certainly would like it to come up high in the rankings when people Google me (which happens more often than I’d have thought, according to my traffic monitoring plugin).  It’s also a way of “hanging out a shingle”, as a friend put it to me last summer, for my entry into the world of professional development training.  Not that I’m planning on having to job hunt anytime soon, but if/when I do, it will be nice to be able to direct potential employers to this site in a cover letter (I also include the URL in the most current version of my resume, right alongside phone number, address, and email address).

As much as this has been good for me and my own reflection process, I hope it has also been helpful to some folks out there who are either considering putting together a portfolio-style online presence for the first time, or simply re-vamping/re-branding an existing site.  As always, I welcome your comments and questions.