Author Archives: Ronnie Burt

About Ronnie Burt

Works for Edublogs. Former secondary math teacher and wannabe musician. Follow me on twitter @ronnieburt!

Edublogger Debate: Scaffolding vs. Struggling – Can You Be Too Helpful?

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My partner in crime here on The Edublogger, Sue Waters, and I have regular debates and conversations around a wide range of topics.

Recently, we were talking about best practices of professional development and writing support documents. We then moved on to a related discussion on best instructional strategies in the classroom when working with students.

One of us believes (and much research will show), that students will remember more and understand better when they struggle with concepts and new ideas. Learning experiences that provide students an opportunity to play with concepts and figure out on their own are best.

The other (with good reasoning and research to back it up too), believes that students that struggle will shut down. A better approach is to provide as much scaffolding as possible – activities that walk through information in a step-by-step manner.

No doubt that to some extent this will depend on the learner, content, environment, and more. But there is a general philosophy at play.

What Say You?

We think many of our readers will have great insight into helping us continue this debate.

Let’s turn this into a blogging discussion!

Here’s what we’d like to try and do:

  1. Write a post on your own blog about this topic. Share your thoughts, examples, research – or whatever you’d like
  2. Leave a comment below with a link to your post
  3. We’ll compile a list of all submissions at the end of the week on a post here on The Edublogger
If this works well, we hope to regularly ask questions like these to help provide everyone with topics to blog about and find new blogs to read.

Celebrating Volunteer Week with VolunteerSpot

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Did you know that this week is National Volunteer Appreciation Week here in the US?

We agree that volunteers in schools deserve all the recognition they can get and truly appreciate all they do.

Schools and classrooms rely on volunteers for countless activities, including field trips, school events, working with students, and much more.

But, as we’ve all probably experienced, recruiting and managing volunteers is not always an easy task. That’s why we like VolunteerSpot.com and wanted share.

VolunteerSpot makes it easy to organize teachers, parents and volunteers with free online signup sheets and volunteer scheduling.

Using a simple planning wizard, any teacher, room mom, or volunteer leader can create an online signup sheet or signup calendar listing jobs, shifts and things to bring.  Volunteers and parents are invited to the activity with an email message (or a link in a blog or on Facebook) and can quickly choose their spots with just a few clicks – and they never need to register an account.

Volunteers are then sent automated confirmation and reminder messages to help everyone keep their commitments.

Simply organize:

Special Upgrade Offer

VolunteerSpot’s free service meets the needs of most groups, but there is also an upgraded version that includes hours tracking, extra registration fields, and assistant organizers.

Readers here can get a free 3 month premium upgrade simply by using promo code EdublogsDoGood when signing up. This code is good through June 30, 2012.

VolunteerSpot and Your Blog

We’ve seen a good number of Edublogs users with links like this to VolunteerSpot activities and events right on their blog.

To add a sign up button to a page or post on your blog, first create your account and set up an activity at VolunteerSpot.com.

Then look for “Create a Link” on the left of your dashboard.

Copy the code this process creates for you and make sure you paste it into the “HTML” tab of your editor in your blog’s dashboard.

More on embedding code can be found here.

Happy Planning and Happy Volunteer Appreciation Week!

What is the purpose of school?

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When will I ever use quadratic equations in my “real” life?

As an Algebra teacher – this question came up every year in my classroom.

And every year, my off-the-cuff answer would change.

1st Year Teacher (ambitious and full of ideas): In such cool applications as Physics and object trajectories (like shooting out of a cannon!), economics and optimization, area problems and fence building, and so much more!

3rd Year Teaching (beginning to build my teaching rhythm): You’ll really need to understand them when you get to Algebra II and beyond. I mean – it is the foundation for all polynomial studies! Just trust me. You need to learn them.

6th Year Teaching (maybe a bit of cynicism setting in): Let’s be honest – you probably won’t. But that isn’t the point. Learning quadratics is a fantastic mental exercise and builds critical thinking skills. The mathematician in me believes they are beautiful. 

This progression of answers may seem backwards to you and my last answer wasn’t all that popular with many students (and maybe a few parents too). It goes against the idea that everything we learn in school should be for a specific purpose.

Whose Purpose?

How we answer questions like these depends on what we view as being most important in the purpose of schools as a whole.

For many, the logic is that younger grades prepare you for older grades, older grades prepare you for the university level, and higher ed prepares you for a job.

This seems reasonable.

Others might argue that in today’s environment of accountability, the reality is that what you learn today prepares you for the tests you will take at the end of the year. The tests will make sure that you are ready for next year. Next year, you get prepared for another set of tests!

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

My Purpose

What if the real purpose of school wasn’t about preparing for jobs or creating an informed electorate?

What if was simply about learning fun stuff, absorbing as many ideas as possible, and seeking answers to challenging questions?

Instead of concentrating on the visions of business leaders or politically motivated legislation, we need to continuously evaluate what students need and deserve out of their school careers.

My ideal purpose of schools and formal education is to expose students to as many ideas, topics, and challenges as possible. The end results (achievement tests) and the specific curriculum covered isn’t nearly as important as the learning experiences along the way.

The rest will then fall in to place.

What I am saying, especially to all of my friends and former colleagues in the midst of another stressful round of heavy state testing – do not forget that all of those great lessons, activities, and projects you did with your students this school year are way more important than any test results or grades.

Yes, really.

WHAT’S YOURS?

Leave a comment below with your ideal purpose, or any relevant thoughts you might have!

Image: Quadratic Equations from Bigstock

Don’t Miss Out! Student Blogging Challenge Starts Soon

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The Student Blogging Challenge is a free and open collaborative project that runs for 10 weeks twice each year.

And the next series starts next week, so now is your chance to register and get involved!

Students and classes that participate work through a set of challenge activities that build blogging skills and foster collaboration by all involved.

Quick facts:

  • Anyone can participate using any blogging platform
  • All levels of blogging skills welcome – complete beginners encouraged to join
  • Teachers can tailor the challenges or incorporate theme however needed to fit in your time frame and curriculum

This post wouldn’t be complete without recognizing the tireless efforts of the volunteer coordinator of the challanges, Sue Wyatt. From everyone involved, we can’t thank you enough!

Don’t miss out! 

 

Proof That Pinterest Doesn’t Look To Be Safe For Education (Yet)!

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If you are like me, you’ve probably been hearing more and more about Pinterest.com lately.

After reading this and that about the fact that the Pinterest craze is definitely something every respectable web and social media enthusiast should be familiar with, I decided this morning to make my first visit to see what the fuss is really all about.

Here Is What I Shockingly Found!

Surely didn't expect to find this! (Click image to enlarge.)

Before requesting an invite to join, I decided to browse through some of the different topics available.

My first choice was the “Education” category, and as you can see in the image above, I was more than shocked by what I found in the very top row of “pinned” stories.

There, front and center of the education page, was a photograph of a nude woman with a link to a page of a very adult nature. I’ve chosen to ‘censor’ it here so not to offend anyone.

Most Likely (Hopefully) a Fluke

When I went back a few minutes later, I noticed that the image had moved far down the page and none of the other images looked too suspect.

According to their terms of service, Pinterest does not allow “obscene” or “offensive” content. It is also important to note that the service is technically still in “Beta” so maybe they haven’t worked out all the filtering kinks.

In addition, Pinterest’s terms don’t allow those under 13 to even visit the site.

Either way, this wasn’t a very good first impression for me.

I’m Cautiously Optimistic

Judging by the good number of tweets and positive blog posts out there, certainly Pinterest deserves a second chance.


 

What Do You Think?!

Does Pinterest have a place in the classroom? We’d love to see examples of it being used successfully in the wild!