Idaho teachers push back against mindless implementation of technology

Is technology the solution to problems of student motivation and learning? Some Idaho teachers are pushing back against the blanket assumption that the adoption of technology will make everything better:

Last year, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a law that requires all high school students to take some online classes to graduate, and that the students and their teachers be given laptops or tablets. The idea was to establish Idaho’s schools as a high-tech vanguard.

To help pay for these programs, the state may have to shift tens of millions of dollars away from salaries for teachers and administrators. And the plan envisions a fundamental change in the role of teachers, making them less a lecturer at the front of the room and more of a guide helping students through lessons delivered on computers.

This change is part of a broader shift that is creating tension — a tension that is especially visible in Idaho but is playing out across the country. Some teachers, even though they may embrace classroom technology, feel policy makers are thrusting computers into classrooms without their input or proper training. And some say they are opposed to shifting money to online classes and other teaching methods whose benefits remain unproved.

“Teachers don’t object to the use of technology,” said Sabrina Laine, vice president of the American Institutes for Research, which has studied the views of the nation’s teachers using grants from organizations like the Gates and Ford Foundations. “They object to being given a resource with strings attached, and without the needed support to use it effectively to improve student learning.”

In Idaho, teachers have been in open revolt. They marched on the capital last spring, when the legislation was under consideration. They complain that lawmakers listened less to them than to heavy lobbying by technology companies, including Intel and Apple. Teacher and parent groups gathered 75,000 verified signatures, more than was needed, to put a referendum on the ballot next November that could overturn the law.

“This technology is being thrown on us. It’s being thrown on parents and thrown on kids,” said Ms. Rosenbaum, 32, who has written letters to the governor and schools superintendent. In her letters she tells them she is a Republican and a Marine, because, she says, it has become fashionable around the country to dismiss complaining teachers as union-happy liberals.

“I fought for my country,” she said. “Now I’m fighting for my kids.”

Gov. C. L. Otter, known as Butch, and Tom Luna, the schools superintendent, who have championed the plan, said teachers had been misled by their union into believing the changes were a step toward replacing them with computers. Mr. Luna said the teachers’ anger was intensified by other legislation, also passed last spring, that eliminated protections for teachers with seniority and replaced it with a pay-for-performance system.

Some teachers have also expressed concern that teaching positions could be eliminated and their raises reduced to help offset the cost of the technology.

Mr. Luna acknowledged that many teachers in the state were conservative Republicans like him — making Idaho’s politics less black and white than in states like Wisconsin and New Jersey, where union-backed teachers have been at odds with politicians.

Mr. Luna said he understood that technological change could be scary, particularly because teachers would need to adapt to new ways of working.

“The role of the teacher definitely does change in the 21st century. There’s no doubt,” Mr. Luna said. “The teacher does become the guide and the coach and the educator in the room helping students to move at their own pace.”

Many details about how students would use their laptop or tablet are still being debated. But under the state’s plan, that teacher will not always be in the room. The plan requires high school students to take online courses for two of their 47 graduation credits.

Mr. Luna said this would allow students to take subjects that were not otherwise available at their schools and familiarize them with learning online, something he said was increasingly common in college.

The computer, he added, “becomes the textbook for every class, the research device, the advanced math calculator, the word processor and the portal to a world of information.”

Idaho is going beyond what other states have done in decreeing what hardware students and teachers should use and how they should use it. But such requirements are increasingly common at the district level, where most decisions about buying technology for schools are made.

Teachers are resisting, saying that they prefer to employ technology as it suits their own teaching methods and styles. Some feel they are judged on how much they make use of technology, regardless of whether it improves learning. Some teachers in the Los Angeles public schools, for example, complain that the form that supervisors use to evaluate teachers has a check box on whether they use technology, suggesting that they must use it for its own sake.

That is a concern shared by Ms. Rosenbaum, who teaches at Post Falls High School in this town in northern Idaho, near Coeur d’Alene. Rather than relying on technology, she seeks to engage students with questions — the Socratic method — as she did recently as she was taking her sophomore English class through “The Book Thief,” a novel about a girl in a foster family in Germany during World War II.

Ms. Rosenbaum, tall with an easy smile but also a commanding presence, stood in the center of the room with rows of desks on each side, pacing, peppering the students with questions and using each answer to prompt the next. What is an example of foreshadowing in this chapter? Why did the character say that? How would you feel in that situation?

Her room mostly lacks high-tech amenities. Homework assignments are handwritten on whiteboards. Students write journal entries in spiral notebooks. On the walls are two American flags and posters paying tribute to the Marines, and on the ceiling a panel painted by a student thanks Ms. Rosenbaum for her service. Ms. Rosenbaum did use a computer and projector to show a YouTube video of the devastation caused by bombing in World War II. She said that while technology had a role to play, her method of teaching was timeless. “I’m teaching them to think deeply, to think. A computer can’t do that.”

She said she was mystified by the requirement that students take online courses. She is taking some classes online as she works toward her master’s degree, and said they left her uninspired and less informed than in-person classes. Ms. Rosenbaum said she could not fathom how students would have the discipline to sit in front of their computers and follow along when she had to work each minute to keep them engaged in person.

Some of her views are echoed by other teachers, like Doug StanWiens, 44, a popular teacher of advanced history and economics at Boise High School. He is a heavy technology user, relying on an interactive whiteboard and working with his students to build a Web site that documents local architecture, a project he says will create a resource for the community.

“I firmly believe that technology is a tool for teachers to use,” he said. “It’s time for teachers to get moving on it.” But he also spoke last year on the capital steps in opposition to the state’s program, which he said he saw as a poorly thought-out, one-size-fits-all approach.

Half of teachers, he suspects, will not use the new computers. And the online learning requirement seems to him to be a step toward cutting back on in-person teaching and, perhaps eventually, on not having students congregate in schools at all.

“We can just get rid of sports and band and just give everyone a laptop and call it good,” he said.

Stefani Cook, who teaches accounting and business at Rigby High School in southeast Idaho and was the state’s 2011 Teacher of the Year, also teaches a modernized typing course to 32 online students after-hours. A contractor for the state pays her to teach the course and also to help other teachers shape and present their online lessons.

Ms. Cook is a believer in classroom technology and generally supports the state’s plan. She is on a 38-member task force that is working out the logistics of deploying computers to teachers next fall and, eventually, to 80,000 high schoolers. The group will also organize training for teachers. Ms. Cook said she did worry about how teachers would be trained when some already work long hours and take second jobs to make ends meet.

“I’m excited about it,” she said. But some teachers, she said, “think it’s just another thing that they’ve got to do.”

Mr. Luna, the superintendent, said training was the most essential part of the plan. He said millions of dollars would be set aside for this but that the details were still being worked out. Teachers will need to learn how to use the new devices and how to incorporate them into their lesson plans, which could involve rethinking longstanding routines.

For his part, Governor Otter said that putting technology into students’ hands was the only way to prepare them for the work force. Giving them easy access to a wealth of facts and resources online allows them to develop critical thinking skills, he said, which is what employers want the most.

When asked about the quantity of unreliable information on the Internet, he said this also worked in favor of better learning. “There may be a lot of misinformation,” he said, “but that information, whether right or wrong, will generate critical thinking for them as they find the truth.”

Mr. Otter said of a teacher like Ms. Rosenbaum, “If she only has an abacus in her classroom, she’s missing the boat.”

Some of the state’s politicians disagree with that message. State Senator Dean L. Cameron, a Republican who is a co-chairman of the senate budget committee, said there was no proof that the technology improved learning. He said he felt the legislature was “dazzled” by presentations given by lobbyists for high-tech companies — who also gave generously to Mr. Luna’s re-election campaign.

(Mr. Luna said that $44,000 of his $300,000 in donations to his last campaign came directly or indirectly from technology companies, but he said that was because they supported his agenda, not because they shaped it.)

Mr. Cameron said of the law: “It’s almost as if it was written by the top technology providers in the nation.” He added: “And you’d think students would be excited about getting a mobile device, but they’re saying: not at the expense of teachers.”

Last year at Post Falls High School, 600 students — about half of the school — staged a lunchtime walkout to protest the new rules. Some carried signs that read: “We need teachers, not computers.”

Having a new laptop “is not my favorite idea,” said Sam Hunts, a sophomore in Ms. Rosenbaum’s English class who has a blond mohawk. “I’d rather learn from a teacher.”

The other thing that makes me annoyed here is that Ms. Rosenbaum feels that she needs to tell her legislators that she is a Marine and a Republican in order to be taken seriously since she is a teacher. When can we get to the point where our legislators feel they need to try to listen to all of their constituents, and not just the ones with whom they agree?

But, furthermore, if technology is the solution to all of our problems, why do schools still have students who know so little about the world around them, much less the basics of an education? What I see happening all around me is that the schools put thousands and thousands of dollars into buying technology, but in my district they are actually discussing laying off our technology specialists and demanding that teachers implement the new software system on their own time while we already have overloaded servers, iffy electrical systems, and antiquated printers-- not to mention that the broadband in our district is so slow it ought to be called "narrowband."

But, hey, giving every kid a notebook computer or tablet will make us look ever so cutting-edge! And of course, they will never be broken, misused, pawned, stolen, sabotaged, or hacked-- ever ever.

Right.

I'm your teacher, not your friend, but this law is still pointless.

As you may have heard, Missouri passed a law known as the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, a few weeks ago making it illegal for teachers to have contact with their students via social networking sites. This law immediately faced challenges about its lack of common sense as well as its constitutionality, so much so that a right-leaning teacher group in Missouri (the MSTA) won the race to challenge it in court.

Little more than two weeks after its UNANIMOUS passage in the Missouri legislature (the Missouri legislature being basically as much an embarrassment as most state legislatures are), the law's implementation was stayed by court order.

So, on Friday, September 15, the law was revised by the Missouri Senate, although it has not been passed by the House nor signed by the governor, so the lawsuit continues.

Here's the question: would this law have prevented some horrible people from using their positions of trust and authority as teachers from contact their students for illicit purposes?

No.

I am adamant about NOT friending my students on Facebook until they are out of college, which in my book means they have to be 24 years old. Then, and only then, if they really want to read about Ms. Cornelius' battles with the neighbors' Satanic dogs or my weird snippets of 70s rock songs, then be my guest. They must really have liked me to want to connect after all those years. Hopefully, also, by then, I will not be treated to pictures of their inebriated selves at some fraternity kegger showing off their new nipple ring, which would be deeply traumatic for me (and one would also think for them, but, y'know, c'est la vie).

I also do not give out my phone number, nor do I have a Twitter account, nor do I stay in my room alone with a student without the door open and at least fifteen feet between us.

BUT, disgusting creeps will be disgusting creeps, no matter what. This law would could easily have been read to make my classroom blog illegal, since it was not created under the aegis of our school district's creaky, misbegotten, twitchy, unreliable technology department, of whom I have previously written. If someone in state government REALLY wants to make a difference on this issue, how about making it illegal for districts to cut deals with miscreants who have crossed the line-- for instance, in exchange for a resignation, the district writes a neutral recommendation, merely pawning off creeps onto the next unsuspecting school district faster than you can say "pedophile." At the very least.

But this law? Unconstitutional as written, and also unproductive.

What mentoring will teach you

I have a teacher whom I am mentoring this year. She is not a fully new teacher, but she is new to our district. And you know what this experience has taught me already this year?

We are expected to juggle so many disparate tasks throughout the class period, the day, and the grading period, it's unbelievable. There is so much we are just expect to know how to do. You have to know the secret process for adding in behavior grades to the electronic grade book, how to interpret the attendance codes, how to fill out the new behavior referrals, how much parental contact is expected, which principals one can rely upon and which principals are completely non-supportive and clueless, how to generate and finalize grades and reports, and so on.

I am learning as much as she is. Primarily, that the demands of this job can be bewildering. I've just gotten inured to it.

Attempted "gotcha" on teacher emails fails-- for now

From Edweek's school law blog:

Teachers' personal e-mails on school district computers are not public records under Wisconsin law and need not be disclosed to records requesters, the state's highest court has ruled.

"There is a distinction between allowing public oversight of employees' use of public resources and invoking the Public Records Law to invade the private affairs of public employees by categorically revealing the contents of employees' personal emails," Chief Justice Shirley S. Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court wrote in the lead opinion.

The case grew out of a public records request by a local citizen for all e-mails sent and received on school computers by five teachers in the Wisconsin Rapids School District for about a six-week period in 2007. The district permits teachers to use school computers for personal e-mail. The requester, Don Bubolz, acknowledged in court proceedings that he was on a "fishing expedition" to examine whether teachers were using e-mail inappropriately.

The teachers did not object to disclosing work-related e-mails, but they sought an injunction to bar the district from disclosing their personal messages. A state trial court held that the teachers' personal e-mails were public records under Wisconsin law.

In its July 16 opinion in Schill v. Wisconsin Rapids School District, the state's highest court voted 5-2 to reverse and hold that the personal messages did not need to be disclosed. The majority issued three separate opinions that offered slight distinctions in reasoning.

In a plurality opinion joined by two other justices, Chief Justice Abrahamson noted that the state's public records law was adopted in 1983, long before e-mail was in widespread use in the workplace. But most other states' courts that have considered the issue have also ruled that personal e-mail messages of government employees should be exempt from public-records laws.

"Disclosure of the contents of the teachers' personal emails does not keep the electorate informed about the government and sheds no light on official acts or the affairs of government," Abrahamson wrote.

Justice Patience Drake Roggensack, in a dissent joined by one other justice, said the public-records exception for personal e-mails "prevents the public from discovering what public employees are doing during the workday, in the workplace, using equipment purchased with public funds. In so doing, the court contravenes Wisconsin's long history of transparency in and public access to actions of government employees."

I an sure that Mr. Bubolz never ever uses work-supplied technology for personal reasons, if indeed he has time to work while he is ferreting around trying to cast aspersions upon teachers. And I wonder if Justice Roggensack would like her personal emails opened up for public viewing?

I will admit that I am very paranoid-- I mean, cautious-- about using the school email system for personal reasons. However, given that teaching often requires one to put in long hours after the actual school day is over, sometimes one just can't avoid taking care of personal business on school computers.

But I have found that this divide between personal and private life doesn't work going the other way. I was recently chided by another district employee for not checking my work email over the summer. You know what my response was? Unlike this person, I do not receive paid vacations- nor do any teachers that I know. Summer is unremunerated time, and given the dedication I show during the school year, summertime is family and personal time. Period.

Over my career I have seen an explosion of technology in the classroom. I started out without even an intercom system and now we have phones, computers, automated messaging systems, and voice mail. We were told that all this technology would make our lives easier and increase productivity. Like workers everywhere, I notice that the main outcome from this growth of technology is to enable more tasks to be dumped on me and to provide my supervisors yet more ways to avoid communicating (My personal favorite? The assistant principal who claimed he didn't get my email as he played a game on his brand-new, district-provided iPhone).

We are constantly reminded that we are salaried employees, and that we are required to perform any tasks assigned to us-- it's right there in our contracts. It would be nice if it was remembered that we are also people with lives.

Aprendizaje de español por el teléfono celular

Why not just give up the war on cell phones and use them in class instead?

Ariana Leonard's high school students shuffled in their seats, eagerly awaiting a cue from their Spanish teacher that the assignment would begin.

"Take out your cell phones," she said in Spanish.

The teens pulled out an array of colorful flip phones, iPhones and SideKicks. They divided into groups and Leonard began sending them text messages in Spanish: Find something green. Go to the cafeteria. Take a picture with the school secretary.

Leonard's class at Wiregrass Ranch High School in Wesley Chapel, a middle-class Florida suburb about 30 miles north of Tampa, is one of a growing number around the country that are abandoning traditional policies of cell phone prohibition and incorporating them into class lessons. Spanish vocabulary becomes a digital scavenger hunt. Notes are copied with a cell phone camera. Text messages serve as homework reminders.

"I can use my cell phone for all these things, why can't I use it for learning purposes?'" Leonard said. "Giving them something, a mobile device, that they use every day for fun, giving them another avenue to learn outside of the classroom with that."

Much more attention has gone to the ways students might use phones to cheat or take inappropriate pictures. But as the technology becomes cheaper, more advanced and more ingrained in students' lives that mentality is changing.

"It really is taking advantage of the love affair that kids have with technology today," said Dan Domevech, executive director of the nonprofit American Association of School Administrators. "The kids are much more motivated to use their cell phone in an educational manner."

Today's phones are the equivalent of small computers — able to check e-mail, do Internet searches and record podcasts. Meanwhile, most school districts can't afford a computer for every student.

"Because there's so much in the media about banning cell phones and how negative phones can be, a lot of people just haven't considered there could be positive, educative ways to use cell phones," said Liz Kolb, author of "From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning."

Even districts with tough anti-use policies acknowledge they will eventually need to change.

"We can't get away from it," said Bill Husfelt, superintendent of Bay County District Schools, a Florida Panhandle district of 27,000 students where cell phones aren't allowed in school, period. "But we've got to do a lot more work in trying to figure out how to stop the bad things from happening."

Seventy-one percent of teens had a cell phone by early 2008, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That percentage remains relatively steady regardles of race, income or other demographic factors. Meanwhile, many schools are low-tech compared with homes outfitted with home networks, wireless Internet and a smartphone for every family member.

Most schools still have prohibitive policies curtailing cell phone use — often with good reason. At Husfelt's district, seven students were recently arrested after they got into a fight on campus that he says was instigated through text messages.

In other parts of the country, teens have been arrested for "sexting" — sending indecent photographs taken and sent through their cell phones. Students also use the devices to cheat: In one poll, more than 35 percent of teens admitted cheating with a cell phone.

But phones are so common now that seizing them is huge hassle for teachers.

"It's just a conflict taking them up and having to deal with them," Husfelt said. "It's too disruptive."

Teachers who have incorporated cell phones into their classes say that most students abide by the rules. They note that cheating and bullying exist with or without the phones, and that once they are allowed, the inclination to use them for bad behavior dissipates.

"Kids cheat with pen and paper. They pass notes," said Kipp Rogers, principal of Passage Middle School in Newport News, Va., "You don't ban paper."

Rogers started using cell phones as an instructional tool a couple of years ago, when he was teaching a math class and was short one calculator for a test. He let the student use his phone instead. Twelve classes, including math, science and English, now use them. Students do research through the text message and Internet browser on some phones. Teachers blog. Students use the camera function to snap pictures for photo stories and assignments.

Classes often work in groups in case some students don't have phones.

In Pulaski, Wis., about 130 miles north of Milwaukee, Spanish teacher Katie Titler has used cell phones for students to dial and record themselves speaking for tests.

"Specifically for foreign language, it's a great way to both formally and informally assess speaking, which is really hard to do on a regular basis because of class sizes and time," Titler said.

Jimbo Lamb, a math teacher at Annville-Cleona School District in south-central Pennsylvania, has students use their phones to answer questions set up through a polling Web site. Instantly, he's able to tell how many students understood the lesson.

"This is technology that helps us be more productive," he said.

Would allowing our students to use their phones as part of the lesson actually transform them and make them "eager?" Those kids may be responding to Spanish instruction, but how much speaking are they doing?

Having just removed two cell phones in the last four school days-- one of which was being used to look up answers on a quiz-- I am not feeling really cell phone friendly right now.

But I will say our current policy is more of a hassle for the teacher than anything. We are supposed to confiscate the phones when we see them. However, we have been told we are supposed to take them to the kid's specific administrator which may be as far as a quarter mile away from our rooms-- and we are supposed to get there and back again in 5 minutes. All that effort-- and the kid doesn't get anything more than a hand slap unless it's their third time.

But do I need to find ways that kids can use their cell phones in class just to be all cute and techy? Really?

Open the pod bay door, HAL....

A few suggestions to school IT people everywhere:

1. Please understand that we are busy trying to make sure that students learn. We do not have 40 hours to spend crafting a website on the software that you purchased instead of working on matters more directly related to teaching. We are not enthralled with the idea of spending more than a full week learning a bunch of code. We especially do not want to do this and then get some cartoony website that looks like third graders did the graphics. Well, maybe a third grade teacher would be okay with that. But most of us are neither IT guys nor third grade teachers.

2. I also do not have time to respond to fifteen (no kiddin') emails about WHY I prefer to use blogging software for my classroom website over your ridiculous program (see 1). If you have time to send me fifteen emails, then YOU need to find something to do. I have some papers that need grading. Perhaps you could try to enter the grades on the idiotic internet-based grading system software you have also foisted upon us. Because right now it will neither save the grades that I have spent all day putting in, nor will it let me quit. So I am in quite the Catch-22 position.

3. You also want to require every teacher in the building to take over 45 hours of computer classes, and yet there are no microphones with which to make podcasts, there are two digital cameras to split among over 200 teachers, and I have to go get extra special double secret permission before I can add any piece of freeware or download a song from iTunes to my computer for instructional purposes. Since you are out of communication 70% of the time, that usually does not happen.

4. And meanwhile, I am placed in firewall limbo when I try to access any images to liven up powerpoints-- and images would be the only thing I use them for, since my students admit that my criticism of powerpoints (ie, that the only thing a kid will write down when being shown a powerpoint is what is on the slide, and nobody wants to read a slide with more than ten words of text on it) is valid.

5. And then, every year, there is the debacle over the software crashing (and often crashing the servers) when students are trying to register for next year's classes. Since my classes always go first, they are always the guinea pigs when this happens. Madness then ensues.

6. The excuse behind the internet-based grading system we use, meanwhile, was that it would save us labor. Since I now have to keep both a paper gradebook and the internet-based one, I think that that claim certainly doesn't hold water (and by the way, neither does my keyboard, and my roof sprang a leak last year right over my desk over a weekend. That was fun).

7. How about the next time we marry ourselves to some software company, we do a check to see if their customer service level rises above something better than, "We have no interest in fixing that problem right now." Which is what you told us the company actually said the last time the software went through a systematic meltdown.

Peace!

You think this machine is your friend*....

A while back our district moved to using a web-based grading program. It was going to be amazing! It was going to increase transparency! It was going to reduce the amount of time teachers spent on grades! It was going to slice, dice, and make julienne fries!

When this was initiated, one person asked what would happen if the internet would go down. She was laughed out of the room. Silly peon! The internet doesn't go down!

Then they forgot the little part about how teachers can't put any grades in when the server goes down.

Which happened five out of nine school days. Right before grades are due.

So maybe my friend used the wrong terminology, but she got the question right.

And guess what? They moved all the disciplinary records and all the information about student schedules to the internet, too! So now, at least the principals and secretaries feel our pain, too, because they can't do any discipline or even access where a kid is when the server goes down.

Did I mention it goes down a LOT?

So I am not staying at school until 5 (which by the way, we were asked to do once last year while they frantically tried to get the server back up in time for report cards to be sent out the next day). I do not take work home with me since I have my own children to bathe, feed, and monitor until I collapse into bed, and you can't access the grade program from home anyway.

So let's just say that there are a few grades that have not been entered. And today was my plan period, and guess what? The server was down again. So more grades weren't entered and I don't have a break tomorrow, either.

Technology is great. Until you actually have to depend upon it.

*-- line about a computer from You've Got Mail.

Facebook+Idiots=Head-Slapping

Idiots.

CHARLOTTE -- A Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher faces firing for posting derogatory comments about students on Facebook, while four others have been disciplined for posts involving “poor judgment and bad taste,” school district spokeswoman Nora Carr said Tuesday.

WCNC, The (Charlotte) Observer's news partner, turned up questionable pages on the social networking site by searching for people who identified themselves as Charlotte-Mecklenburg employees.

Superintendent Peter Gorman has recommended firing a teacher who listed “teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte” as one of her activities and drinking as one of her hobbies.

In her “About Me” section she wrote: “I am teaching in the most ghetto school in Charlotte.”
Thomasboro Elementary, where most students are minorities from low-income homes, lists that teacher as a faculty member on the school Web site. She has been suspended with pay, Carr said; the dismissal is not final because teachers have a right to appeal. The Observer is not publishing her name, pending the district's final decision in her case.

Reporter Jeff Campbell of WCNC said he showed district officials pages involving seven CMS teachers. Carr said four faced unspecified discipline that is less than suspension or dismissal. She would not provide details about the offensive material, but the pages Campbell submitted included photos of female teachers in sexually suggestive poses and a black male teacher who listed “Chillin wit my n---as!!!” as an activity and had a suggestive exchange with a female “Facebook friend” accompanying a shirtless photo of himself.

The school district is reviewing the case of a high-school special-education teacher who used a Facebook “mood box” to post “I'm feeling p---ed because I hate my students!”

District officials are working on a memo reminding all 19,000 employees that information they post on the Web can be viewed by the public and should be appropriate. “When you're in a professional position, especially one where you're interacting with children and parents, you need to be above reproach,” Carr said.

The teachers in question chose to identify their employer and skipped an option that blocks public viewing of their pages. “I think they just didn't think these things through,” Carr said. “That's kind of mind-boggling.”

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has an investigator who specializes in online issues, including reports of inappropriate material posted by students about teachers. Carr said “several” employees a year are disciplined for inappropriate posts. The district generally responds to complaints, rather than randomly viewing pages.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and other districts also check Web pages, especially popular networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, before hiring, Carr said.

Teachers across the country have faced similar situations – enough so that NEA Today, the journal of the National Education Association, published a roundup this year. It included a Colorado English teacher fired for posting her sexually explicit poetry on MySpace, a Florida band director fired for a MySpace profile that included “his musings about sex, drugs and depression,” and a Virginia art teacher fired for posting photos of his “butt art,” done by painting his private parts and pressing them onto canvas.

Last fall, according to NEA Today, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch found teachers writing about sex, drugs and drinking on their MySpace profiles.

“There's an old lawyer's saw that goes something like this: Never put in writing anything that you wouldn't want read in open court or by your mother,” concludes the article, written by Michael Simpson of the NEA's legal office. “Maybe it's time for an updated adage: Never put in electronic form anything that you wouldn't want viewed by a million people, including your colleagues, students, and supervisors – and your mother.”

No matter how many times I try to explain it, my students don't get the fact that their emails accessed from school are then stored on the school server, that emails sent from school are then stored on the server, and there just is not any such thing as a privacy right at school. Then there's the whole facebook idiocy: even pages marked "private" can be accessed and published all over the place. For teachers not to get this drives me crazy.

You think this machine is your friend

Apparently, teachers and students weren't the only things that took a vacation over spring break in Evansville, Indiana. A whole month's worth of grades hit the road too, never to be seen again. By the way, check out the explanation from IBM engineers:

A computer malfunction wiped out a month's worth of grades at three high schools and one middle school, giving struggling students a second chance but dismaying others.

The Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corp. announced on its Web site that the malfunction occurred during spring break.

Students at Harrison High had mixed reactions, depending on how the second semester was going for them, senior Ibrahim Dughaish said Monday.

"Some are really upset because they worked hard for five weeks," but others saw it as a reprieve, he said.

"My son is an honor roll student and I prefer him keep his grades. He works hard for them," said parent Teresa Hayes.

Upcoming report cards at the four schools will not be issued as scheduled. Instead, the final two weeks of the current six-week period will be combined with the final six weeks of the year into an eight- week reporting period.

Harwood Middle School Principal Mike Raisor said some of his teachers had printed out grades before spring break, but most had not.

"I think the reality set in with everyone that you couldn't do anything about it. They took it pretty well in stride," Raisor said.

The school district's announcement said IBM engineers determined the loss of data was caused by "an unfortunate and very rare combination of hardware problems and backup configuration settings."

Whattaya wanna bet that there's going to be a directive for teachers to start printing out paper copies of grades at least once every few days now? And that's probably a good thing, although it kind of defeats the purpose of the whole "paperless" idea, and creates double work for teachers-- but nothing new there, really.

And I don't know about you, but in most school districts around here, it's high-stakes testing time, and then after that, pull those kids off the fire, because they are done. So the grades that were lost really aren't replaceable in any sense.

Generation Tech: Students teach elders a thing or two

A group of middle schoolers in Missouri have started volunteering as technological tutors for the older adults in their community who may feel cowed by all the techno-babble. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

At 70 years old, Loretta Stadler is trying to understand the difference between a user name and a password. Caylen Erger, 13, is biting her lip, searching for the best way to explain it.

"You have to type in both so nobody can just sign into your e-mail and read it," Caylen says.

"Oh," says Stadler, of the Affton area, her eyes beaming behind her bifocals as if a light just went on behind them.

Similar scenarios are playing out at several computer terminals around them Monday in the library of Seckman Middle School in the Fox School District. For an hour every month since December, students have invited technologically challenged adults to come in for lessons on how to use their latest gadgets.

For some, like Stadler, it's learning to do more than play solitaire on her computer.

For others, it's learning to use their cell phones, satellite TV boxes, DVD players, VCRs and GPS systems.

Patience in teaching seems to have come naturally to the children, said Gina Beuhner, 33, a math teacher and adviser to the program.

"I'm a nervous wreck over here," says Barb Wiethuchter, 67, of Arnold. "Or maybe I'm just a wreck."

"That's OK," replies Carlie Firestein, 14, of Imperial. "There is plenty of things I don't know how to do."

Carlie, along with Caleb Doyle and Alex Baum, all 14, came up with the idea of offering the free technology consulting hour. They dubbed the effort, Project TEAM, or Teens Educating Adults on Modern Technology.

"I realized there was a need to strengthen the bond between my generation and the older folks, and what better way than to teach them something we know a lot about," Caleb said.

What a wonderful idea that could be duplicated anywhere. As more school districts require community service hours as graduation requirements, we teachers often see kids claim that helping mom at work or cutting their own grass should qualify. Here's an example of true service to the community, and it seems pretty simple to set up.

Kudos to these kids and their teachers, not to mention the school district for giving access to their computers to community members.

Cell phone follies redux: How to get out of finals?

So maybe this cell phone thing is a bigger problem than any of us realized. From the backwoods of Arkansas::

AUGUSTA, AR — Police arrived at Augusta High School just as the rumors of violence after a student’s suicide became shrill, leading parents to rush the campus to take their children home.

But police and school officials say the text-message-fueled panic over others committing suicide and weapons at the small town’s high school turned out to be only a way for students to avoid taking semester-ending exams.

“Somebody took advantage of a tragedy that happened in Augusta, a tragedy of a young man taking his life,” Superintendent Richard Blevins said. “Somebody exploited that and I guess that made me madder than anything else. Somebody was so insensitive to use that for their own gain.”

Bomb threats and disruptions have happened before at the 200-student high school in Augusta, a city in northeastern Arkansas on the banks of the White River. But police say the proliferation of cell phones among students allowed some to take advantage of the 16-year-old student’s death through small-town gossip in the electronic age.

“There’s rumor mills in this town like you just cannot believe, because everyone knows everybody. Ninety percent of people is kinfolks with somebody else,” Augusta police Capt. Jim Moore said. “You get a ripple that spreads like a wave.”

Moore retired as police chief in Augusta in 1996 after 20 years patrolling its two square miles, returning only after the current chief got called up to serve in Iraq. He remembered some threats in the past, and how the phone company once tracked down a boy calling in a bomb threat so quickly that responding officers still found him with the receiver in his hand.

Crime is slow in Augusta, though, as the department on average responds to one reportable call a day.

Then on Dec. 17, officers responding to a call found a 16-year-old student dead after he had hanged himself. Moore said counselors came down to talk to students at the high school — and that’s when the rumors started.

“They just said there was going to be a shoot ’em up,” Moore said. “They was supposed to have been a pact and all this kind of stuff — that there were going to be eight or 10 hang themselves over the holidays.”

The next day, the Woodruff County sheriff’s office got a call saying students were talking about bringing guns to school. Parents called the school district worried about the supposed plot.

Augusta police and a sheriff’s deputy were at the school Dec. 18 as students entered. Blevins said school district officials used a handheld metal detector to scan everyone entering the building and looked through bags for weapons as well.

“The only thing we found were cell phones,” Blevins said, an item banned at the school, but grudgingly accepted by teachers and staffers. But after the wand searches, the superintendent said students began text messaging each other, spreading the rumor to family members.

By 10 a.m., only 25 students remained at the 335-pupil elementary school after panicked parents descended on the campus. The Searcy Police Department called, asking if police at Augusta needed help after a report of a shooting at the school reached the larger town nearby. Ambulances were even diverted to the area.

Blevins said the school probably lost two days from the panic, initially spread by students who said they got threatening text messages.

“Of course, this never happened. It’s just more damn rumors,” Moore said. “Every kid down there has a cell phone and they just jibber-jabber, jibber-jabber.”

Augusta High School is now closed for winter break, the only noise coming from whistles and pounding of basketball practices. But on Jan. 7, the school’s first day of the new year, Blevins said staff will institute a zero-tolerance policy on cellular phones. He also plans a full investigation into who caused the panic, promising to push for expulsions.

“It’s like hollering fire in a crowded theater,” Blevins said. “We can’t have people doing that.”

But Moore believes there likely won’t be any criminal charges filled in the case.

“It’s all just a rumor,” he said.

I've seen cell phones used to attract masses of students to trouble. I've seen kids spend 300 bucks on a cell phone who tell me they can't afford to buy school supplies. It's amazing what some people will do without to be in on the latest fashion-- and technology is definitely a fashion accessory first besides being a tool. I've also been fighting the battle against the cell phone with PTD, since I believe she has no need for one and I'm pretty sure she would tempted to text-message her friends at school. My suspicion is she wants one to show off and to waste hundreds of minutes yacking instead of pursuing more worthy activities. No matter what, it would be a distraction.

So, sure, I'm just an old fossil who has turned off her text-messaging feature, but is there any way to find the originator of the text messages in the story? Think of the panic that was created by this insensitive behavior. Who was the kid who thought: "Hey, someone's kid just killed himself. How can I turn this to my advantage?"

Unconscionable.

Speechless... but the mighty text message rolls on

I have just had something happen that completely flummoxes me. Perhaps I am just a fossil hopelessly ourt of step with the times, but I think not.

I just had a parent textmessage their child to tell them a very close relative died.

I am appalled. Perhaps I am too sensitive.

But! Can't you get on the phone and call my room and ask to speak to your child or have them called down to the office so that you can tell them something like this in your own voice?

This young person was devastated.

We have a no cellphone rule that I am usually quite the stickler about. However, if a child has a true emergency, I say turn the thing on vibrate and place it up close to your body after checking with me. That's how this young person got the text message.

Well, at least they didn't use emoticons or those ridiculous abbreviations.

Can You Hear Me Now?????

Hallelujah!!! I got my latest cell phone bill, and this is the most incredible thing that I have ever posted, but I swear that it's true: My latest bill was $1.90 BELOW the amount to which I agreed in the contract. Including tax. $37.05 instead of $39.95. I swear.

Sorry, Fred, but it's true. I used to have the guys that constantly chant "Can you hear me now?" but they didn't hear me when I complained about a coverage hole right over my house. Before that, I had the guys who "Never stop working for you," but apparently they only worked for me when they could figure out how to triple the charges. I also was the victim of an advantage, which ended up being Singularly expensive when I received a $380 bill right before Christmas for roaming after a trip to Chicago, even though my plan had no roaming charges. After 5 hours on the phone and speaking to 19 different alleged oxymoronic "customer service" reps, I finally got one who would agree to give me my money back-- after 10 days more waiting. By the way, the last guy to whom I spoke, Mr. Honesty, told me to NEVER, NEVER, NEVER do autopay for your cell phone bill, since you'll never see your money back in a dispute.

See, I knew Joan Cusack could never lie to you. Anyone who can play the girl in the brace (Geek Girl #1) in Sixteen Candles to Marcella in Grosse Pointe Blank to Jessie the Singing Cowgirl in Toy Story can get me to part with my hard-earned greenbacks.