Conduct county/state PD workshops: Sort of.  I applied, but ultimately was not chosen, to run some county-level PD workshops this year.  I was, however, asked to run two sessions at the New Jersey Education Association’s Technology Integration Conferences this spring.  Prior obligations prevented me from attending both, but I was able to make it to Trenton a few weeks ago to speak with a group of teachers about Google Sites.  I’m told it went well.   And in that vein…

Present at NJEA 2009: Yes!  Every November, the New Jersey Education Association hosts its annual convention in Atlantic City over two days.  Last summer, I submitted two proposals for the convention’s “High Tech Hall”, hedging my bets that one would be accepted and the other, not.  To my surprise, not only were both accepted (meaning I was “on stage” for eight straight hours the first day of the convention!), but I was also asked to come back the second day to do a one-hour workshop on wikis in the classroom.  It was a phenomenal experience (I wrote about it here and here), and I’ve already submitted more proposals for Convention 2010.

Attend two psychology conferences: Achievement unlocked!  I attended a presentation in King of Prussia, PA in September on Asperger Syndrome and the New Jersey Association of School Psychologists Winter Conference in Jamesburg, NJ in December.  While I mostly write here about educational technology, I am still a school psychologist for several hours out of the week, and I find far fewer online PD resources in this arena than I do for general ed classroom teachers.  One notable exception to this is the National Association of School Psychologists, who has an entire hub of online resources, including RSS feeds of info, blogs, and online webinars and presentations for which I can receive continuing education credit hours towards my national school psychologist re-certification (thanks, NASP!).  Beyond them, however, I haven’t found much (but am open to suggestions if you have any!).

In a related vein, I also had the privilege of attending a talk by renowned education law guru Perry Zirkel, who came to my school to address an audience of special education teachers and Child Study Team members from Hunterdon County.  An unexpected PD bonus, to be sure!

Get an iPhone: (OK, so they can’t all be lofty goals.) I’d lusted over the iPhone since the day it came out, but in the weeks leading up to my current contract expiring, Sprint introduced a new Android phone, the HTC Hero.  I ended up sticking with Sprint and purchasing the Hero shortly after it came out – the Android market is easily competitive with the iPhone App Store, and my monthly payment is still significantly less than what it would be with AT&T.  I love my Android phone, and can’t see myself going back now.  I didn’t technically achieve this goal, but I’m quite satisfied with how it turned out nonetheless.

Get published: Yes and no.  At the time of goal-setting, I had envisioned writing an article and having it published in an academic journal.  That hasn’t happened YET (but watch this space in the next year), but I am proud to announce that I will have two short stories published in upcoming anthologies by Kaplan Publishing.  The Teachable Moment is available from June 1, 2010, and includes my story “Alleviating Shakes-Fear”, about my experiences teaching Shakespeare’s works to high school students.  My second story, “The Ick Factor”, will appear in One Size Does Not Fit All (available from June 29, 2010), and presents my feelings on the importance of a visible GLBT presence in school curriculum.  As noted in the agreement I signed with Kaplan, I retain the copyright to my stories, and will be publishing them here as well over the next month or so.

Attend EduCon: Did it.  I only live an hour’s train ride away from Chris Lehmann’s Science Leadership Academy, so now that I’m done with grad school (for now) and my kids aren’t babies any more, I really had nothing preventing me from going.  I had wanted to attend since the first EduCon in 2008, but circumstances were such that I wasn’t able to make it until the 2010 event this past January.  I only attended one of the three days, and you can read my thoughts on my time there here.  Deven Black and I also recorded an episode of EdTechClassroom with Karen Chichester & Burt Lo in which we discussed our respective experiences at SLA (check it out here!).

There are two other goals on that list of a more personal nature that I can’t go into here, but I will say that one is in process and the other one has been intentionally deferred until next summer.

These certainly aren’t the only things I’ve done in the past year, but these were the major goals I wanted to make absolutely sure I hit (or at least made progress on) since last summer.  Would I have achieved them had I not recorded them and periodically referred to the mindmap?  Perhaps; it’s impossible to say, really.  All I know is I did write them down and I did achieve almost all of them… and yes, I’ve already started looking at my list of 2010-2011 goals and working hard to make those dreams realities, too.

We’re always setting short- and long-term goals for our students, but are you doing it for yourself?  We all have ideas of what we’d like to do, but have you taken the time to think 6-12 months into the future, put pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard!), and make those intentions a little more concrete?  Perhaps most importantly (and terrifying), are you sharing those goals with anyone else?

Getting Started

All you need to sign up for the service is an email address.  If you wish to use the SMS reminder feature, you’ll need your mobile phone handy as well, as you’ll be sent a confirmation code via SMS.  This is important if you plan on using this service with more than one phone (e.g., a spouse, multiple students, a student’s parent, etc.) – you can connect one account to multiple phones, but you must have each phone handy in order to get the confirmation code.

Existing Reminders

Upon login, you are presented with a list of existing reminders.  You can choose to view these as a list (see below) or on a calendar.

While this is fantastic for reminders you set to repeat, the list can get cluttered if you don’t manually delete those one-time reminders (“pick up eggs and bread on the way home!”).  If you don’t see yourself pruning your list every so often, you may want to opt for the calendar view.

In list view, you’ll also see the frequency you’ve set for each message (more on how to do this in a bit):

Setting a New Reminder

Click “Add” on the upper right-hand menu to add a new reminder.  You’ll see a pretty self-explanatory set of text boxes:

I don’t categorize my reminders, but some folks may wish to do so.  Note the warning: if you have your reminder sent by SMS, only the “Title” field will be sent.  If it goes to email, you’ll also get whatever you type in the “Description” field.

Setting the Delivery Date

MyEmailReminders gives you several options for setting one-time-only and repeating reminders.  For something like a homework reminder, you may choose the fifth option down and check off every weekday.  Another example: I have yearly reminders set for the first days of March and December that remind my wife and I to make appointments to get our cars inspected.

Setting the Delivery Time/Method

Here’s where you decide if you want your reminders sent via email, SMS, or both.  As you can see from the options, you can choose any time of day (in 15-minute increments), and you can also have reminders sent prior to the event.  You can check off as many or as few of these boxes as you like.

Add Another Recipient?

You can send reminders to multiple recipients.  Anyone you designate can receive reminders via email, but as I noted above, only registered mobile phone numbers will receive SMS reminders.  As you can see from the screenshot, I’ve registered my wife’s phone so she can receive the occasional SMS reminder as needed (er, not that you ever need it, honey!).

After these steps, just click the orange “Add Reminder” button at the bottom of the page, and you’re all set!

Epilogue

As I explained last time, I like the idea of email- and SMS-based reminders due to the relative ubiquity of access and platform agnosticism.  Anecdotally, I can speak to the benefits I’ve derived from these reminders – in fact, sometimes the simple act of setting the reminder was enough to make me remember what I needed to!  If you use a similar service, or if you decide to start as a result of reading this, please leave a comment and share your experiences!

PingMe is a service that allows users to schedule reminders to be sent via SMS, email, and Twitter. I’ve been a loyal user for over two years now (according to my archive, the first reminder I sent myself was to prep then-newborn Kiera’s bottle at a certain time) primarily because of the several similar services I tried, PingMe was consistently on time with its reminders, as opposed to several minutes early or late (or not at all, like some of its competitors). It is easy to use, dependable, and best of all, free.

Correction: was easy to use, dependable, and free.

I got an email earlier this week or last from parent company Zetetic announcing the closure of this project (see the announcement on their blog). While I am very disappointed, this is the risk we run with free web apps, which is why it always pays to have an alternative service in mind (I eventually did find one, but that’ll be in my next post).

The closure of PingMe hit me much harder than would, say, a service like Wordle or a Quillpill because I have used their service in both my professional and personal lives, and found it to be invaluable in helping me remember to do everything from getting money from the MAC machine (ATM or cashpoint to you outside the Northeast United States!) to picking up milk on the way home to making an important call within a certain window of time.  I’ve used it to remind myself of important work-related issues that had to be attended to at specific times, too.

While I’ve been utilizing SMS & email reminder systems in my personal & professional lives for years now, I’m certainly not the only one. In fact, multiple studies have shown SMS reminders to have mostly high (but admittedly varying) degrees of efficacy in increasing desired behaviors, including:

• adherence to medical treatment schedules (Jacobson & Szilagyi, 2005; Kollmann, Riedl, Kastner, Schreier, & Ludvik, 2007; Liu, Abba, Alejandria, Balanag, Berba, & Lansang, 2008; Strandbygaard, Thomsen, & Backer, 2009;  Hanauer, Wentzell, Laffell, & Laffel, 2009)
• attendance at doctor & specialist appointments (Downer, Meara, Da Costa, & Sethuraman, 2006; Koshy, Car, & Majeed, 2008; Chen, Fang, Chen, Dai, 2008; Foley & O’Neill, 2009; Kruse, Hansen, & Olesen, 2009)
• participation in exercise regiments (Prestwich, Perugini, & Hurling, 2009; Prestwich, Perugini, & Hurling, 2010)

Implementation

I’m thinking that this is a potentially powerful tool for students with weaknesses in organization and executive functioning (read Rebecca’s post about planning her wedding for a good overview of what executive functioning is).  Off the top of my head (and please add your own suggestions in the comments), email/SMS reminders could be used for:

• homework assignments
• project due dates & reminders
• standing appointments in school
• reminders for students with home-based PT regiments
• facilitating home/school communication

These are very broad categories, and could take many different shapes based on the needs of individual students or the framework within which they live & attend school (e.g., would the teacher set the reminder, would the student set the reminder, etc.).  Also, if I may bemoan the loss of PingMe once more, it had a great ‘repeat’ function which would persist in sending texts until the recipient replied with a specific command to shut it off.

Obstacles/Considerations

As I said when I wrote about this a few years ago, privacy concerns are an issue.  Sensitive information probably should not be sent through these third-party services (although one might argue that they’re just as susceptible to security breaches as sending unencrypted email between two parties).  Also, I understand that texts do cost money to send and receive.  While I’ve limited my research to services that send texts for free, there is always a cost associated with receiving texts, either per message (usually $0.10 – $0.20 per) or in the shape of an unlimited monthly allotment.  While I can’t make that charge go away, the ubiquity of text messaging means that more and more people are moving in the direction of unlimited plans (at least in my entirely anecdotal experience).  Schools may also find it a worthwhile investment to purchase cheap handsets and provide prepaid service under the umbrella of assistive technology, treating the device more as a PDA than a phone.

But I Know a Great iPhone/Android/BlackBerry/WinMo App That Does This!

Congratulations; so do I – I have one on my Android phone that works quite nicely.   The point of using the SMS method of communication is that it is platform agnostic; that is, it doesn’t matter which type of phone one has, whether it’s ‘smart’ or ‘dumb’ or iPhone or Android or whatever – the vast majority of modern phones can send and receive simple text messages.  There’s no need to outfit the entire 10th grade with iPhones for just one app when an SMS can be sent to any one of the phones already in their pockets.

In my next post, I’ll provide an overview of the service that has supplanted PingMe as my reminder utility of choice.

References

Chen, Z., Fang, L., Chen, L., & Dai, H. (2008). Comparison of an SMS text messaging and phone reminder to improve attendance at a health promotion center: a randomized controlled trial. Journal Of Zhejiang University. Science. B, 9(1), 34-38. Retrieved from MEDLINE with Full Text database.

Downer, S.R., Meara, J.G., Da Costa, A.C., & Sethuraman, K. (2006). SMS text messaging improves outpatient attendance. Australian Health Review, 30(3): 389-96. Retrieved from PubMed database.

Foley, J., & O’Neill, M. (2009). Use of mobile telephone short message service (SMS) as a reminder: the effect on patient attendance. European Archives of Pediatric Dentistry, 10(1): 15-8. Retrieved from PubMed database.

Hanauer, D.A., Wentzell, K., Laffell, N., & Laffel, L.M. (2009). Computerized Automated Reminder Diabetes System (CARDS): E-Mail and SMS Cell Phone Text Messaging Reminders to Support Diabetes Management. Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics, 11(2), 99-106. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Jacobson, V.J., & Szilagyi, P. (2005). Patient reminder and patient recall systems to improve immunization rates. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (3): CD003941. Retrieved from PubMed database.

Kollmann, A., Riedl, M., Kastner, P., Schreier, G., & Ludvik, B. (2007). Feasibility of a mobile phone-based data service for functional insulin treatment of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus patients.  Journal of Medical Internet Research, 9(5), e36. doi: 10.2196/jmir.9.5.e36.

Koshy, E., Car, J., & Majeed, A. (2008). Effectiveness of mobile-phone short message service (SMS) reminders for ophthalmology outpatient appointments: observational study. BMC Opthalmology, 31(8):9. Retrieved from PubMed database.

Kruse, L., Hansen, L., & Olesen, C. (2009). [Non-attendance at a pediatric outpatient clinic. SMS text messaging improves attendance]. Ugeskrift For Laeger, 171(17), 1372-1375. Retrieved from MEDLINE with Full Text database.

Liu, Q., Abba, K., Alejandria, M.M, Balanag, V.M., Berba, R.P., & Lansang, M.A. (2008). Reminder systems and late patient tracers in the diagnosis and management of tuberculosis. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (4): CD006594.  Retrieved from PubMed database.

Prestwich, A., Perugini, M., & Hurling, R. (2010). Can implementation intentions and text messages promote brisk walking? A randomized trial. Health Psychology: Official Journal Of The Division Of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 29(1), 40-49. Retrieved from MEDLINE with Full Text database.

Prestwich, A., Perugini, M., & Hurling, R. (2009). Can the effects of implementation intentions on exercise be enhanced using text messages?. Psychology & Health, 24(6), 677-687. doi:10.1080/08870440802040715.

Strandbygaard, U., Thomsen, S., & Backer, V. (2010). A daily SMS reminder increases adherence to asthma treatment: a three-month follow-up study. Respiratory Medicine, 104(2), 166-171. Retrieved from MEDLINE with Full Text database.

So why have I stopped the program just over a third of the way through?

It’s not that journaling was ineffective; in fact, I don’t know if I would have lasted as long were it not for the added guilt incentive my blog gave me to keep going – after all, I couldn’t punk out after having stated my intentions so boldly, could I?  I think I put my finger on the issue in my 27 December post:

Update: I took my “recovery week” as a real rest week – took about 4-6 days off completely. I did more days than I’ve blogged about here, but I’m finding I’m burning out – I’m a fit guy, and have run and lifted for years, but I’m having a real hard time finding 60-90 minutes a day where I can follow the program without other stuff interfering. I’m going to pick it up again today in Week 5 of the program and see where it takes me.

The problem was not with the supports; it was with the ultimate goal.  In the back of my mind, I knew that this was going to be time-consuming, but it wasn’t until I got into it that I realized I was effectively having to choose between exercise and my family (long story, not interesting, just trust me).  I have since switched to a different workout routine that is still challenging, but more compatible with my schedule.

So why whine about my workout on an education blog?  Simple: it was a stark reminder to me to keep goals attainable, behavioral, academic, or otherwise.  In hindsight, even though I was able to keep up physically with the workouts, the specifics of my work and family’s schedules made this an unrealistic undertaking for me.  I kind of knew this in the back of my head, and had a Plan B to go to just in case, but that’s not always the case, especially with our students who are attempting to meet goals that we set for them, either via behavioral expectations, grades, or IEPs.

The same may be true of your students.  If Johnny (why are these hypothetical example students always named Johnny?) picks his nose for 80% of the class period, it may be unrealistic to expect to extinguish that behavior right away.  If, after, say, two weeks of behavior interventions, he’s picking his nose during 40% of the class, that’s not bad at all – you’ve cut the frequency of nasal spelunking in your classroom in half.  Of course, you’ll eventually want to kill that off entirely, but in a case like this, it’s important to a) recognize his progress, and b) understand that behavior is complex, and can take time to change.  The same is true of improving study skills, academic performance, reading fluency… some improvements come quickly, but others take time, and don’t always come as easily as we’d like.

As educators, we often like to set the bar high and challenge our students, and that’s admirable.  We just have to remember that setting the bar too high too soon can sometimes do more harm than good – set up some smaller bars first, for them and for yourself.  The confidence boost they (and you) get from meeting those short-term goals (“Hey, I can do this after all!”) could be just what they need to get them to that ultimate goal.

Two years ago I blogged about my attempts to change an undesired behavior of mine using some pretty basic behavior management techniques.  This evening, I’m going to come at this from another angle: increasing desired behavior through blogging.

“Journaling”, or writing down reflections & analyses of one’s own behavior, is one of the “go-to” tools of the cognitive-behavioral therapist.  It helps make one more aware of one’s behaviors and consequences, and also allows for reflection on the emotional and social impact of those behaviors, both on oneself and on others (Ullrich & Lutgendorf, 2002).  In some cases, it may also have a general therapeutic effect beyond simple behavior management (Fritson, 2008).  It’s both a motivational tool and coping mechanism, and it can work as well for adults as for children.

I’m using journaling to support a new behavior I’d like to see continue.  After a false start last week, I started the P90X workout program this past weekend, and it is without a doubt the toughest workout program I’ve ever done.  I’m used to lifting very heavy weights with decent breaks in between, but this program has you up and moving, lifting, breathing, and sweating constantly for about an hour at a pop.

My cardio fitness level is not where it used to be, so this is pretty challenging for me.  In order to a) keep me mentally focused on the benefits and b) make myself accountable an audience (real or imaginary, I’ll grant you), I’ve started microblogging my efforts here.  It is my hope that this will help “keep me honest” and committed to the full 90 days of this workout program.  It will also help me track my progress as I (hopefully) gain strength and endurance throughout the program.

Other folks in the edublogoblahblah have done something similar, only as a group, regarding their running efforts, and I seem to remember (but can’t locate) yet another example of a similar group of educators rallying online around their weight loss efforts.

Do it in a group or do it on your own.  Do it online or offline.  Do it on a blog or do it in a notebook.  Journaling is a tool that can help you reach a behavioral goal you’ve set for yourself, whether it’s running your first 5K, losing that last 10 pounds, or even more long-term goals like surviving your first year of teaching or finishing that grad degree.

Citations:

Fritson, K.K.  (2008).  Impact of journaling on students’ self-efficacy and locus of control.  InSight, 3, 75-83.  Retrieved from http://www.insightjournal.net

Ullrich, P.M., & Lutgendorf, S.K.  (2002).  Journaling about stressful events: Effects of cognitive processing and emotional expression.  Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 24(3), 244-250. doi: 10.1207/S15324796ABM2403_10

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

Let’s backtrack. We already know that behavior generally serves one of four major functions, and that we have to find an alternate way to meet the function. Simple enough, right? The function is to help me deal with frustration or anger, the behavior we want to get rid of is swearing, and now we just have to figure out how to make it worth my while to knock it off.

But wait! What if we could alter environmental conditions such that I wouldn’t be as likely to curse as much – wouldn’t that be helpful? I’ve found that my fuse is a lot shorter when I’m sleep-deprived, so one of my first steps toward cleaning up my language was actually trying to get more sleep. I didn’t collect hard data on this, but I did notice that on where days I slipped up, I usually had only gotten about 4 or 5 hours of sleep the previous night. Anecdotally speaking, days that followed 6 or more hours of sleep were far less likely to see me curse. Also, I tended to swear more when I drove (my wife and I drive to work together, so this was relatively easy to address – she agreed to take the wheel some days when I just felt particularly worn down from work). This is called controlling the setting event (long-term lead-up to the behavior, like how much sleep I got) and antecedent (letting me ride shotgun).

The flipside to the antecedent, of course, is the consequence. Although the word has negative connotations, it really just means what occurs as a result of the behavior. We already addressed my most consistent consquence: I felt a little better about whatever was bugging me after swearing. Fair enough, but the other consequences were that my son was repeating me and my wife was severely agitated. The cons outweigh the pros here, and things needed to change.

Let’s review!

Setting event _____ leads to antecedent _____ leads to target behavior _____ leads to consequence _____.

If you can successfully fill in these blanks, you’ll have the tools to manage any undesired behavior – yours or somebody else’s. @JackieB, @audhilly, and anyone else who’s trying to break themselves (or a student) of a bad habit, this is one fill-in-the-blank worksheet that might be worth your while. Next time, we’ll add the final two components: time and reinforcement.