Kaulbach's Modern World

Living in Vermont means making amends for educational productivity when a perfect snowstorm blankets the state. Students and teachers embrace the cold powder while it lasts. We ski, we snowboard, we play hard. No wonder that 16 Olympians are from Vermont.  At school we gained one actual snow day and then a week of residual effects as smiling, exhausted populations loped through the doors. Now we are on our winter break. Week 5 merged into week 6 of my experience with a 1:1 iPad rollout but not without sound accomplishment. Smart Technology- Students no longer groan when I request their weekly download of additional apps. I offhandedly created a metaphor to explain I need them to access a variety of apps.  Imagine   the iPad as a "dumb" robot. Each application that we add to it gives it a function like a brain. We are the masters building the brain of this device. Instead of playing games, we need to control the games, control the applications. We make it a "smart...

Did you know that  it was Digital Learning Day nationwide?  PBS offered a fantastic opportunity to connect educators.  I stepped up my enthusiasm for digital learning by telling students to SMASH APPS! and tweeted class totals (#dlday).  Smashing immediately connotes images of destruction but according to my twitter community it simply means using more than one app to create something digital.  My students had opportunities to using sketching apps with text apps, work flow apps with platform apps and as an added incentive, would be allowed to use class time for gaming or bonus points on past assessment scores. Guess which incentive won out? Our school launched our Follow Your Dreams project during DLD week. Every week a senior or alumni of has the opportunity to present their work towards a dream, TED Talk style in our library media center.  During a 20 minute advisory time students voluntarily choose to attend a variety of club activities, conferences ...

Just a quick push for some blog favorites. I'm so busy watching the Olympics and tweeting at the same time, I really can't focus on anything else!  Vermont has a number of athletes attending and several of them are from my area in the northern region. Even better, I coached and hovered behind coaches who worked with these athletes since they were in elementary school. I basically grew up, learning to be a better educator because of these kids and my fellow coaches.  This is a blog by my husband and 1998 Olympian, Marc Gilberston. His focus is still on skiing. He is currently racing in the Canadian Ski Marathon. But he also makes time to meet with a colleague and librarian each week to help our school keep a heads up on tech changes. Check out:  Weekly Geek http://youtu.be/w-RinB0KTrY This girl started as a fantastic high school runner but quickly became much more. She went to Burke Academy, was coached by Matt Whitcomb and they went on in ski racing. He is ...

Week 2 of my focus on technology.  "Chilly" in Vermont means starting each day with -20 temperatures. Head colds are circulating through the school and a surprise Lock Down drill happened right in the middle of a well planned lesson.  No worries.  My students huddled into a dark corner of my classroom during the lockdown with their iPads in absolute quiet.  Each student was gaming or texting like crazy. I took a selfie and forwarded it to the principal. Last week I introduced lessons to accommodate  Luddites and iPad enthusiasts and this week was dedicated to keeping routines. I really need the transition towards technology to be smooth or learning will be set aside for entertainment value only. Notability is my go to workflow application for downloading and editing class notes. Each day, students followed the same work flow using various templates that I designed or chose- vocabulary organizers, CLOZE activities and reading comprehension charts. In Notability...

Week 1- experiment Week 2- establish workflow Week 3-create  The transition to a 1:1 digital classroom has become a means for lessons designed around common goals and outcomes set by both students and teachers. Cram cards are a strategy for organization and are just one example of a classroom practice that digital technology can't replace. Students requested an opportunity to create a cram card for the midterms so I saved the remnants of some; it fascinates me to look at the details and differences all have with one goal in common.  Each card above is an individual work, not copied, not shared representing the needs and abilities of each learner.  By responding to student requests for cram cards I saw how effort and review help assuage exam anxieties.   Student evaluation does not necessarily have to happen only in a digital classroom.  But an evaluation application that yields instant compilation of answers makes response immediate and therefore...