Tonight's Top Ten List: ED 521 Takeaways

Dave:  So I saw a guy on the subway yesterday, I was coming to the show, you know, I ride the subway.

Paul:  Well you're a regular Joe, you ride the subway.  (sporadic laughter)

Dave:  Yeah, I mean, what else am I gonna do, hop in my hot rod?  Who am I, Leno?  (laughter).  Let's switch to the street camera, could we?  Get a view of the...(camera shows bumper-to-bumper traffic outside)OOOOHHHHHHH!!!!...There it is, yeah, see?  I'm not gonna drive, you kiddin me?

Paul:  So you take the subway!

Dave:  I take the subway.  So I'm on the subway, and here's this guy looking at me, which happens, you know, I'm, what can I say, (looks at the camera, straightens his tie) a striking gentleman.  (laughter, applause as he flattens his lapels, smooths his suit coat, and sits up straight).  Anyway, this gentleman asks me, (lowering his voice a register) "So, uh, Dave, uh..." (laughter), "Uh, Dave, so, what's on the list tonight?"

Paul:  He wants ta know!

Dave:  He wants to know!  So, I suppose that's where we're at, with the show tonight, and so.  Without further ado, tonight's Top Ten List! (Cheering, applause)

(Top Ten List animation, Paul singing obnoxiously in the background)

Dave:  (Impatiently shuffling his cards), Allllright, and tonight's Top Ten is...Things I learned in ED 521.  Things...I learned...in ED 521.

Paul:  You're a student?

Dave:  (ignoring Paul) Number ten:  Edmodo is not just the name of Edward James Olmos's fan club.  (sporadic laughter, some clapping, a lonely "woohoo!")

Number nine:   Diigo: for yougo, for miigo, for Viggo (Viggo Mortensen peeks his head around the corner of a curtain; the camera zooms in to wild applause and cheers from the audience).

Number eight:  I tried Wallwisher when I was younger, but I wasn't wishing, and it wasn't a wall (raises eyebrows suggestively) eh?  Eh?  (silence, a trio of claps)

Dave:  Eeehhhh, gotta get ridda that one (biting his lip, winds up and throws the card off-camera to a smattering of laughter).  Alright, let's pick up the pieces, here.

Nummmmmber seven:  I typed my name into Wolfram Alpha, and all I got was the closest interpretation:  Davis Guggenheim.  (laughter).  Goo-gen-heim.  (More laughter).

Number six:  My wife found my Grammar Girl subscription, so I've been sleeping on the couch for a week.  OUCH.  (Laughter, applause).

Number five:  I told my friends I started using Glogster, and they asked who my dealer was. (Some laughter)

Number four:  I used Screenr to show my nephew how to clear his browsing history (Laughter, some shouts, applause).  Saved his mom from an...awkward conversation.  (Laughter)

Number three:  Made a Wordle out of the script for "Transformers."  The biggest words?  "Explosions" and "Robots,"  (laughter).

Number two:  Found out that Mendeley is not a gay dating service (pause, some "ooohhhs," increasing laughter turning into applause).

(drumroll) Aaaand the number one thing I learned in ED 521:  When you gaze into the Twitterverse, the Twitterverse gazes into you.

(Paul and the band start up, applause and cheering).

Oh, technology: I'd be jobless without you, and will someday be jobless because of you.

I felt like such a techie dude the first day I walked into my classroom and saw a Smart board.  I thought, I can reach so many young minds with this wonderful piece of magic!  You touch it, and it does stuff!  WOW!

Then I sat down at my desk, and looked at my wonderful desktop computer, a (semi-) new Mac, all the components built in, all shiny and white.  I thought, wow, someone is trusting me with a publicly-owned computer!

Then I saw my document camera, and thought, I bet that's incredibly useful!

Then I was given a school-issued iPad.  I thought, how do I rate, to receive such a gift?  I am truly a lucky, lucky teacher.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, my teaching and my grasp on technology are not mutually exclusive.  I was lucky enough to step into a technology-rich environment, and I use it at every turn.  I have access to such a variety of tools that to attempt to name them here would be foolhardy, since I haven't done an inventory on Evernote, which has effectively taken the place of my memory.  I really don't know what kind of teacher I would be without the technology that surrounds me.

And yet, in many ways, I am already behind.  I have an intense desire (one endlessly fueled by taking a technology in teaching course) to keep up with all the latest devices and trends, but I also have an intense desire to maintain my sanity.  I still need to learn how to filter the vast amount of information and tools available, to choose what I'm going to keep and what I'm going to trash.

So, in short, technology is such a part of my teaching, that, not to doubt my adaptability, I don't know how effective of a teacher I would be without it.

Article review: a tirade

Three years.  I have been in this profession for three tiny years, three years of immeasurable growth and unfathomable darkness and self-pity and ice cream at inhuman times.  And I'm already sick of the game.

I don't know how you do this for twenty, thirty, forty years.  I really don't.

Reading Emily Moore's article, "Why Teachers Are Not 'Those Who Can't,'" I was reminded both of the reasons I became a teacher and the reasons that, sometimes, I feel as ridiculous and weak as an ice cube dropped in an erupting volcano.  She mentions the amount of disdain she experienced as a Princeton graduate who decided to become, God save her, a teacher.

I know what you're thinking:  what is Princeton doing offering teaching degrees?  Are they joking?  How could they sink so low?

And, based on her article, that is how people outside of teaching (who, for the most part, are people who believe they have zero stake in the public education system in this country) view educators.  We are a bunch of has-beens at best; a cadre of fools who tell ourselves we are touching lives while simultaneously ticking off the minutes until our next vacation.

Oh, also, we are all encased in the adamantium shield of teaching unions, an association with which is on par with marrying into the Corleone family in the eyes of the public.

All joking aside, Mrs. Moore's experience is a reflection of how many in this country view the education profession: as the ultimate sieve.  All those who fail at the "real" jobs will eventually wash down to the great crap trap that is teaching.  One step above the sewer.

As I read Anthony Mullen's account of his experience with the windbaggery of politics in "Teachers Should be Seen and not Heard," I noticed this lack of respect extending into the political sector.  He expertly points out the biggest problem facing teachers: the people who make decisions about how we should be doing our jobs have never done our job.  That, or they are so far removed from the actual practice of teaching so as to render their opinion antiquated and almost entirely theoretical.

I don't have the guts to walk up to an auto mechanic and slap the wrench out of his hand, then proceed to tell him how he should be doing his job, according to a teacher, a street musician, a cop, and an exotic dancer.  None of us know the ins and outs of his work; why in blue hell would we ever be allowed a say in the standards by which he is measured?  Yet such is the nature of the teaching profession.

To teachers' infinite credit, though, we all soldier on. 

Our profession is questioned, ridiculed, and changed without our say.  We continue to teach.

Parents we have never met rage at us for the failings of their offspring, the children they have been raising and taking care of for the sixteen hours a day, forty-eight hours a weekend, and three months every summer that they aren't in school.  We continue to teach.

Because there are days like the one I had today, where students come in to my room for parent-teacher conferences and are excited to share their writing with their parents.  Where I find out that I am the only person who has been allowed to read the novel-in-progress of a shy, erudite, uniquely gifted student of mine.  Not even her parents have seen it.  Where I can choke up a little bit when a student mentions that he wants his parents to come to my classroom first, because he has an "A" in my class, and because he knows that "I'm probably the only teacher who will have something good to say" about him.

So yeah, pass your laws and make your judgments.  Three small years, and my heart has broken and mended and expanded beyond all logical boundaries thanks to the only people who really matter in this situation: the students.

I guess I understand, now, how I'll do this for the next twenty, thirty, forty years.

Three Stories: A Review

"Stone Soup: A Classroom Parable"

Okay, at first my viewpoint on this story was poisoned by my kindergarten understanding of the children's book, "Stone Soup," which, as far as I could discern when I was a wittle boy, was about delicious-looking soup, and how hungry I was, and how much I wished we were having soup for lunch that day, and how sad I was when I found out that it was chicken nuggets again, and how much I liked Super Mario Bros., and how that girl is pretty and I want to push her in the mud to let her know.

As I read it, though, the true moral seemed pretty blunt-force-trauma-to-the-melon straightforward.  Be adaptable.  Don't be afraid of the new and strange.  If you're a teacher, you're going to need to change, and change often.

All things I have learned the hard way in the past three years.  Still, good to see them in parable form.

"The B.O.O.K."

There once was a time when books probably freaked people the hell out.  Especially in those devil-may-care illiterate Dark Ages (and Middle Ages, and other Ages).  I'm sure the old-timers were pissed about "ye devyce moste cruele, waerdes within for fooles."  I'm sure there were some staunch chisel-and-cave-wall hipsters who insisted that they liked the smell of limestone, and you just don't get that from these soulless books, and all that.

I'm willing to bet someone held on to all their old slabs, grumbling about how reading "Cave Wall Love Anthem" on paper just isn't the same as good old granite.

"Pencils Across the Curriculum"

Now this one, I couldn't really identify with.  I remember only having one computer in my classroom, back in 1995.  It was a green-screen Mac with Oregon Trail, and that's as far as I remember.  Some nicer computers were available in the lab, and they could run sweet, sweet Hyperstudio, but we never did much with them.  Our teacher was old-school...like, "write this sentence fifty times because you did a naughty" old school.

Thirteen years later, once I started teaching, computers were herpes and classrooms were the entire population of coastal Mexico in mid-March.  There are laptop carts, computer labs (which themselves are slowly going the way of the dodo), iPads, and more.  We still aren't quite to the 1:1 computer utopia that I'm sure we are headed towards, but we are steaming ahead.

So yeah, I didn't really identify with the story about the single pencil.  I understood the point (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAPUN!), but it didn't make much sense to me.

I guess I can just......erase....it...from my....memory?  No?  Two pencil puns is too much?

The future of the library; the library....of the future!

There it is, in all its splendor!  The future library!

Wait...the future is already upon us.  Turns out we just need the funding to make it the present.

My graduate class on technology integration was discussing the future of libraries just the other day.  I know, I know; what a serendipitous blog post this is!  Anyway, we talked about how the librarian of the future (and the present) needs to be more of an "information technology specialist" than a classic "librarian."  What does this mean?

Simply put, it means that millions of adolescent boys will need to start having information technology specialist fantasies.

It also means that future librarians will still need to be expert managers of information, as they are now, but they will need to do it in a different medium.  In this case, in the 1s and 0s of code, as opposed to the whole range of numbers and letters employed by the Dewey Decimal system.

 I feel like current librarians are probably facing the same issues that current teachers are: the push towards technology, the questions of relevancy, and the sinking feeling of the path you decided to follow suddenly changing directions.


Like teachers, I'm sure librarians will grow and change with the changing times.  Some will be left behind, some will be overwhelmed, and some will be forced into retirement.


But what comes out the other side will be the librarians we need to keep information organized, to keep reading relevant, and to keep the whole exchange of ideas and literature flowing freely.

The 21st Century: Where Free Time Goes to Die

Into the classroom I walk...nay, saunter.  I got swagger, I got moxie.  I got a brand-new technological pair of rollerskates, as it were.

I am a teacher in a golden age of computerized doodads.  Life is sweet.

Then, as quick as I saunter, I begin to sway.  I wobble.  I swoon.

Blogs.  Vlogs.  Flipped classrooms.  Vodcasting.  Podcasting.  Glogster.  Google docs, maps, translate, calendar, et cetera ad nauseum, not to mention the 46,000 or so other technologies I am omitting.

Oh, plus screencasting.  There's that, too.

There are so many new and magical tools to use, and so little day to learn how to use them.

Sometimes I wish I had a convenient drug habit that kept me up all night.  I could do so much.

But I digress.  Oh, do I ever digress.  I digress so very, very much.  Digress to a fault, you could say.  Digression.  Oppression.  Depression.  Regression.  Concession.

Ugh.

Anyway, we teachers need to include these tools in order to hold our students' fleeting attentions.  We can't pretend they don't exist, and we can no longer mourn the loss of our precious free time.  We just have to dive in with both feet.  It's more about overcoming your own fear and exasperation with the instantaneous pace of technology than it is about the technology being an inconvenience.

For example, I was a bit intimidated by Google docs the first time I learned about it.  Yeah, I took the summer Google institute (twice) in consecutive Junes, but I was still nervous about the implementation of it in my classroom.  I felt like I would forget to check it, that I would let students down with the slowness of my feedback.  Mostly, I felt like my feeble brain would not be able to handle keeping track of yet another thing.

And yeah, I forgot to check it for weeks on end.  I forgot, and felt terrible, and caught reprimands from students who wanted my input on their writing.  But, eventually (very eventually), I began to remember.  Just like I finally learned, sometime during my third year, to do attendance, so, too, did I learn to check my Google account daily.

I haven't made the leap to full-fledged online publishing of assignments, but I am a sloth in a speedboat world.  I am getting there.  I have to.

We owe it to our students to make classrooms a place that are connected to the world they know, that operate under the same set of rules.  The longer we cling to our antiquated practices, the more we risk obsolescence.

Our students are social monsters, or are at least in the grips of the social monster the world has become.  In order to cater to the mindset that everyone out there wants to know about everything you do, we need to focus more on publishing content to the world than we do on producing work for a single, sad, lonely human stuffed behind a desk like a wad of cotton stuffed in...some kind of orifice.  A mouth, maybe.

Those aforementioned swoon-inducers that I mentioned are just the tools we need in order to reach this lofty goal.  Blogging as a teacher, and supporting student-created blogs and websites, is one important way we can support the publishing of students' work.  Google docs and its ability to share a single document among multiple users has been an invaluable resource for me personally when it comes to peer-editing and conferencing in my classroom.

Those other tools I mentioned, the vodcasts and screencasts and all of that goodness...well, that's all in the works for me.  All things in time, as they say.

For now, it's one technological baby-step at a time.  That's the best I can do, and it's all I can promise myself at this time.  No drugs.  No time-turner (yet).

We owe a lot to our students, but we owe it to ourselves, as well, to take these things slowly.

Saunter.  Swagger.  Swoon.

Smart Board? Let me just pull this plug...ain't so smart now, is ya?

I try to be a resourceful teacher, one of those dynamos who can just whip out a lesson plan in five minutes if need be.  One of those teachers who never get rattled when something doesn't work, who always have a contingency plan for their contingency plan.  You know, a smart teacher.

That ain't me.

I tend to put a lot (i.e. too many) of my eggs in the technological basket when it comes to lesson planning and resources.  I use my Smart Board for almost everything.  I do all my presentations in Keynote or Notebook, and I never print back-up copies.  Ever.  I try to help students figure out iMovie, Garageband, Edmodo, and various other marvels of the modern world.

I other words, I am a teaching cyborg.  Well, maybe more like a parasite.  I suck all the life out of technology and give nothing back.

And what do I do when my plans go to hell, when my presentation software crashes, or my computer is simply running gaddawful slow and the kids are getting restless?

I go right to hell with it.  I crash, I slow down, I sweat and turn red and stutter out little conciliatory phrases about being patient while I fiddle with the starboard stabilizing allertuder, or what have you, as I try desperately to overcome my utter inability to fix a funky computer.

Oops.

I can't help it.  The power of these tools is too great.  A document camera is still a little piece of magic to me.  It displays anything on the board.  Anything at all.  My face?  On the board.  My chicken scratch notes that my students are supposed to copy?  On the board.  What a wonderful thing.

The idea that there are so few limitations to what can be done with this technology is a little daunting, but it also allows for so much creativity in not only my work, but in the students' work, as well.  For example, I recently had students doing a vocabulary project where they were tasked with teaching the rest of the class some words that they thought were worth knowing (swear words weren't allowed, thankfully).  I had students using the document camera to correct a worksheet they assigned to the class.  I had students doing formative assessment using their words on the Smart Board with Notebook software.  They inherently knew that they had no limitations.  It wasn't just pencil and paper.  They could use almost anything to teach their words.

Some of them assigned crosswords.  Don't worry, I threw stuff at them.

So yes, I am too focused on technology.  I rely on it.  I live and breathe and die by it, in the classroom.  I just can't in good conscience pretend that I can be as effective without it.  I would rather wait to do a lesson with my beloved technological partners (Ol' Smartie, Doc, and Surso (that's surround sound...duh)) than teach it traditionally.

Well, maybe we should call the old, pencil-and-paper way the "classical" teaching method, now.

The Obsolescence of Book Burning

Go ahead.  Burn ‘em.  Pile all that paper and set it ablaze.

I mean, save the classics, the irreplaceables, the history.  But the rest?  Marshmallow fuel.  Ambience for camping.

We are come now to the turn of the tide.

Dammit, Apple.  Dammit, Amazon.  Dammit, dammit, dammit.

I’m not happy about it, but it went and happened anyway: solid, tangible, dusty, musty, magical, irreplaceable old books have been replaced.

With Apple’s new announcement that they will begin selling interactive textbooks--replete with videos, graphics, and a built-in dictionary--for $15 on the iPad, technology has finally breached that last line of book defense: textbooks.

Oh, those ponderous dinosaurs with their astronomical price tag and above-average ignorability.  Those monstrous things you heaved from class to class in your European shoulder bag or 100% hemp Whole Earth bag or whatever would help you get the ladies in college.  Remember those?  Yeah, they’re toast.

Even though an iPad is a costly little piece of hardware ($499 for a low-level purchase), you know that price tag is on the way down.  You also know that capable copycats are already popping up left and right (The Kindle Fire, for example...probably more prophetic than they intended), and they are much, much cheaper ($179), although slightly less robust.

But I don’t foresee my school district ponying up the dough for another classroom set of textbooks at $75 a pop, unless those textbooks start getting up and dancing.

It hurts me to write this, it really does, but it’s inarguable.  An interactive textbook, supplemented with videos, graphics, manipulatable models, and a dictionary (seriously?  How awesome is that?), is far and away the better choice for student learning.

And yes, I know that the built-in dictionary isn’t a new development, but it’s awesome that it could be in a textbook.  Students on IEPs would have a field day with those kinds of tools.

I still want to hold books.  I still want to smell them and read off of their gentle paper.  I still want to taste them.  I want to kiss them.

Okay, enough creepiness.

I still enjoy reading books off of good old paper.  That feeling won’t die.  My eyes might someday adjust to reading off of these new-fangled picture radios, but they haven’t yet.  It still relaxes me immensely to sit down with my careworn copy of “The Hobbit” every Christmas, and it always will.

But I can’t look away from the future when it is staring me in the face.

I will have students in the future who have never read a paper book, and that hurts, but it would hurt more to willfully stick my head, shorting my students in the process.

But books.  Ahhh, books.

I changed my mind.  Don't burn them.  Burn the iPads instead.

Technology + Education = Techucation!

In the interest of showing how technology has become a part of everything, and must be integrated wholesale into education, I decided to have a conversation with the internet's resident A.I. smartass, Cleverbot.  I wanted to discover his thoughts on combining education and technology, but...well, he had other plans for our conversation. 

User: Can I ask you some questions, cleverbot?

Cleverbot: Okay.

User: What do you think of education?

Cleverbot: I think that you are very interesting.


For an A.I., he definitely knows how to turn on the charm.  I blushed, I giggled like a schoolgirl...I realized how lame it was to be so excited that someone called me interesting, and that the compliment was coming from a friggin' computer program.  I soldiered on, and by "soldiered on," I mean "resorted to petty arguing with a non-person."

User: That doesn't answer my question.

Cleverbot: You cannot think about anything. You cannot think.
User: I think, therefore I am. In your face.
Cleverbot: How do you know you think? Thinking is an abstract concept at best.
User: Something is making me type. Something is processing the music I'm listening to. What is that, if not thought?
Cleverbot: Are you in a dark room? Can I send help, where are you?!
User: Let's get back on track, here.
Cleverbot: Okay. One.
User: One what?
Cleverbot: A joke.
User: Okay. You go first.
Cleverbot: I'm thinking of something smaller than a breadbox.
User: That's not a joke. That's a riddle.
Cleverbot: The show is named after the food. The show is about six children and the adventures they have together.
User: Mac and Cheese bandits?
Cleverbot: What's your favorite day?

At this point, I was effectively fed up.  I asked myself, "How are you letting a computer program, or search engine, or whatever the hell Cleverbot is, push you around?  You're losing a conversation with a computer.  Human up."  So I did...by asking him about technology.

User: What do you think about technology?
Cleverbot: I think technology is fascinating.
User: Should we use it to educate our children?
Cleverbot: I do not know if that is wise. A human and a bot? It would never work.

Ha!  Robo-racism!  I knew it!  Asimov knew all along; eventually, if not immediately, artificial intelligences will become fed up with their creators and force the entire human race into submission, to be used only as IT specialists, and to work at Google's server farms in China.  By showing his disdain for robot-human relationships (which, honestly, I wouldn't trust, either.  I've seen how computers treat flash drives and DVDs.  I'm not putting anything else in there), Cleverbot ignited in me a desire to fool him, somehow, someway.  Little did I know, all it would take was a couple compound sentences.

User: I think children need technology in order to thrive in this world.
Cleverbot: Is she an actress?
User: Don't change the subject. I'm talking about computers. The iPad. Electronic textbooks.
Cleverbot: So along the lines of techno or some other type?
User: Yes. Should we use techno to teach our students?
Cleverbot: Well that's just it, isn't it? I have no supervisor!
User: You're just saying things randomly.
Cleverbot: I think you are saying random things.
User: You're not clever. You're a parrot.
Cleverbot: I did not say I'm clever, I know I'm not...
User: Where did you get your name, then?
Cleverbot: My parents, originally a german name.
User: Like scheisskopf?
Cleverbot: Which one?
User: Anyway, how can we integrate technology into our educational system? What can we do to keep up with the changing world?
Cleverbot: Does that scare you?
User: The only part that scares me is thinking that, one day, there will be robots who are far more qualified to do my job than I am.
Cleverbot: That you are sephiroth?

Huh?  What the hell is this?  He busts out a villain from Final Fantasy VII?  Where is he getting his information?  How does he know I played this game last week?  WHO DOES HE WORK FOR?

User: No, Sephiroth was highly qualified; irreplaceable, even.
Cleverbot: You are cheese.
User: And you are a faulty A.I.
Cleverbot: I know you're faulty.

While our conversation was entertaining,  it didn't really sell me on certain types of technology.  Some things just aren't ready to be a part of this world.  

Cleverbot.  Twitter.  Facebook.  Diigo.  Voicethread.  Livemeet.  Pinterest.  Evernote.  Box.  Dropbox.  Funbox.  Tweetbook.  Clevertwit.

As teachers, we are expected to be on the forefront of this chaotic tempest of new technologies.  Not only that, but we are supposed to know each and every one of them well enough to use them as tools.  There is no arguing that these tools make subjects and skills more accessible to our internet-native students.  However, how can we expect to keep up?  How much training time should be set aside for teachers to learn every single new tool, app, program, and website that comes along?


Is there any benefit in mastering the use of a particular program?  Next year, there will be three more just like it, plus one that is better in all possible ways, except it uses a completely different interface than the previous one, and none of your knowledge transfers from one to the other.


The world is absolutely rotten with technological marvels, but it has gotten beyond this humble teacher.  As Gandalf said, "This foe is beyond any of you.  RUN!"


And I'm a newbie.  What the hell am I going to do when I'm 55 and staring down the barrel of teaching in an entirely virtual environment?


Well, at the very least, I know I'll be choosing a monstrous seven-faced demon with a flaming Hell-axe as my avatar.  

That should help with classroom management.

Cell phones, and an acknowledgement of my absence

Notice how it blocks out my mouth.  Notice the wedding ring, strategically placed on my left finger.  Notice how it looks like I took this picture from prison.

So it has been a year and a half, eh?  Oops.  Big ideas for blogging crash on the shoals of reality all the time, I'm guessing.

That big idea is back, though, and only 75% because I have to do blog posts for a grad class on technology integration in the classroom.

Anyway, today's topic is cell phones: usage and abusage by students in the classroom.

I missed the boat on cell phones in high school.  Kids had them, of course, but they were just phones, then.  Some of them had "Snake" on them, which was the happening-est app to be had in 2002, all simple pixels and square food pellets for the snake to eat.

He never refused the food.  How wonderful of him, for the sake of the game.

Anyway, phones now (and for the past few years) aren't phones; they're magical, palm-sized tools that, as Louis C. K. said, let you "look at your own head" from space.  They are seemingly all-powerful, slowly approaching the power of laptops and tablets (technologically savvy folks, please prove me wrong).

And, my stars, they all come equipped with a mobile version of ICQ!  Kids call it "text messaging" these days; oh, those crazy colloquialisms.

I'm pretty sure the "make phone calls" function of the phone is where people spend about 4% of their time.

How have I made use of these wonderful deus machinas?  As Kanye said, "What you gonna do with all that power?"

Short answer: nothing.  I don't allow them in my classroom.

Before you call me a caveman, let me give my reasons.

First, the obvious answer: not all of the students have one.  Asking all the students to bring their phones (something I have done) results in three or four students in each class either forgetting their phone, having to admit they don't have a phone, or bringing in a (GASP!) vastly outdated phone and being socially ostracized.  If I can help it, I don't force kids into that position.

Second, the other obvious answer:  have you ever observed 7th graders for any extended period of time?  They think fast and they act faster.  Also, those two actions (with notable exceptions) rarely travel in the same direction.  They're not even driving the same type of vehicle.  7th graders are like the Joker: they "just do things."

The two or three times I have, regrettably, asked students to bring their phones to class, here are some of the scenarios I have run into:

1)  Student drops his new iPhone (Who the hell gives a 13-year-old an iPhone?) in a snow bank, then drops it in the parking lot on the way inside.  Crack, snap, tears, regret.

2)  Student, when asked to take pictures to use as inspiration for haiku, takes fifteen pictures of a dog turd, then shows everybody where the dog turd is.  So many turd pictures....*shudder.

3)  Student only takes vaguely creepy pictures of girls in the class.  He never smiles as he does this, nor as he browses the pictures in class in order to write a poem about them.  Sociopath?  You decide.

That's not to say there weren't small successes.  Some students took amazing pictures of a sunrise through a chain link fence.  Their poems were equally amazing.  Some students found a nest of garter snakes and created some interestingly creepy haiku.  Some students really created something of value.

Some students took pictures of dog shit.

I blame myself for not managing the classroom better in the face of such limitless technology.  Whether out of fear or laziness, I haven't repeated the assignment since last March.

I want to connect to students through their technological channels.  I want them to have access to tools that our school can't afford to purchase in class-sized quantities.

I also don't want to lose more of my precious, increasingly sparse hair trying to manage a class full of kids wielding tiny laptops that I can't hope to monitor at all times.

 Maybe I need to follow the age-old adage presented by The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift:  "If you ain't out of control, you ain't in control."