Week 6 Blog of Choice 2: Are schools really Germ Central? What can you do to fight germs in your school?

Teachers know when cold and flu season hits schools are breeding grounds for germs.  Many parents do not realize that hand sanitizer, sanitizing wipes, and tissues are all staff responsibilities, thank goodness for the warehouse stores!  Where does your school stop cleaning?  Teachers are left to fight the nasties?  Hopefully, we all are in buildings were floors are swept or vacuumed daily, and bathrooms are sanitized daily.  Remember clean doesn’t mean sanitized.  Does your cleaning staff outsourced or in-house complete detailed training process to find the places germs hang out in schools?  Let’s look at the facts and the tips.

Teacher's Classroom Responsibilities  

Cleaning of chalk or white boards, door knobs, faucets, desktops, teacher’s desk, teacher lanyard, student passes, classroom manipulatives, shared crayons and writing utensils, classroom library, and the pencil sharpener are all the responsibility of the classroom teacher.  The pencil sharpener and teacher lanyard were new, but not a surprise.  One article suggests parents send their children to school with mechanical pencils to reduce exposure to germs by avoiding the germ infested pen sharpener.  I will be wiping my desk, door knobs, window latches, faucets, lanyard, and pencil sharpener daily with sanitizing wipes. I will sanitize the boards and students material including desks weekly or directly after use by a student with cold symptoms.

Young Classrooms

Young classrooms can also limit passing of germs using the Clorox Program lesson plans for keeping preschool to grade 3 ready to fight germs.  Instilling students with the habit of a 20 second hand wash with warm water and soap will make them a germ exterminator. Consider students adopting a hand washing song like Henry the Hand’s  (45 second) theme song to guide them to germ free hands.  Singing the entire song will hopefully yield a 20 second warm soapy wash.  Henry the Hand doesn’t stop there, watch the 3.33 minute video on clean hands.   Visit the Henry the Hand website for additional resources.  There is also a slightly older audience video called, Protect! Don’t Infect:  Germ Wars   making germs, criminals that need to be stopped.  Classrooms that use a reading or story rug should have students sit along the outside perimeter of the carpet preventing students from huddling close to each other and the reader. 

Computer Labs

May 2008 ABC News medical unit reported, “Your keyboard: Dirtier that a toilet,” reported that one keyboard tested had 5 times the germs of a toilet seat.  April 2009, The Eastern Progress Online afflicated with Eastern Kentucky University identified 5 places college students should watch out for germs and yes, computer keyboard and mouse is in the top five!  The list for the top 30 home germ locations includes the home computer keyboard and mouse.  Yes, I know that you get the point the computer lab is a wonderful place to grow germs and a difficult place to disinfect.  Some bias exists as researchers were compensated by companies producing the products used to remove the bacteria.  However, the cleaning instructions are acceptable. 

What if public access computers required washable keyboards?  Yes, hospitals and medical facilities have some high end washable keyboards but, some inexpensive silicone travel keyboards in a rainbow of colors for less than $8 a keyboard might be a good idea for public school and library computers with instructions for cleaning keyboards, mouse, and the desktop at each station.  A group of students from the Prince George Community College (PGCC) performed a study focusing on germ prevention using hand sanitizer in open computer labs.

Bathrooms and Hallways

Backpacks and pocketbooks are also an issue on the germ radar as frequent although, temporary residents of bathroom floors.  Students should always use bathroom hooks and not place any articles on the bathroom floor even for a second.  Administrators, time to check bathrooms for availability of hooks to keep those heavy backpacks off the floors and germ free.  How many high school students gather to check makeup in the bathrooms?  Ladies please think before you put your pocketbook or makeup bag on the bathroom counter. 

What do you think the germ count is on a public school bathroom counter?   Maybe schools should be more like corporate retail restrooms cleaned and check every hour.  I can’t see that being feasible in my building but I think cleaning the cafeteria bathroom at the beginning of each lunch period is a reasonable option since most if not all of our 2200 students attend one of the four daily lunch periods.  Adding hand sanitizers to the beginning of each lunch line would also help reduce the spread of germs.  Yes, lunchrooms are the most germ ridden area in any school with library materials high in germ counts too.

Have you ever seen the water bubblers sanitized?  It is recommended that drinking water fountains be sprayed with sanitizer and scrubbed daily and recommend hourly checks for large events like a high school sports event. This involves disinfecting the bowl, mouthpiece, mouth guard, hand button, the outside casing, and the drain where germs are always present.  

Who cleans the handrails in your building?  I have never seen these things done once in the 10 years I have been teaching in my building.  This is an issue for cleaning instruction as is the exterior doors, which frequently have more germs on the glass than on the handle.  I guess many people know of door knob germs, avoidance causes transferring germs onto the glass which is not seen cleaned often either?  Do schools have a cleaning hygiene checklist?  One school’s  staff avoided a particular bathroom because of odor, until one cleaning procedure killed the smell causing germs.

Germ fighting in public spaces

Cell phones are always near our faces, at our mouth to speak and ears to listen and held by hands that were washed, when?  Germs can live on office, home, or cell phones for 3 days which could be days after the infected person has gone home sick.  Shared newspapers, magazines, and money like phones are germ parking lots waiting for someone to pick them up and take them home without ever seeing the germs originator.  It truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

You may want to take a tip from the musical group Subhumans’ video Germs, see lyrics below.  

I am a germ under your skin
I crawl through your veins and I work my way in
I play with your health I destroy all there is
I m the germ in your mouth when you give her a kiss

And tomorrow they'll put you away
And the doctors all they will say
Is- You re gonna die

I am a germ under your skin
Like a hypodermic needle pushed in
I run in your blood and I screw up your brain
I've got a disease just to send you insane

I am a germ under your skin
And I got a feeling I m gonna win
It s no use believing in the national health
Cos when you are dead I'll destroy someone else

Week 6 Social Bookmarking and Google Reader

Thoughts on Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is feature I can see real benefit from especially when I move from laptop to desktop and once back to school on my netbook.  The beauty is that I can always have all my bookmarks on the machine I am working at the moment.  This is huge!  I have had real difficulty which I attribute to the bouncing between machines using different versions of Google.  I choose Diigo as I had tried del.ico.us a year ago and just had let things lapse.  Diigo has been converting a large number of accounts and somehow all of my bookmarks were lost.  I did e-mail Diigo because my password no longer worked.  The folks at Diigo were great and reset the password and I logged in with my Google e-mail account to find no bookmarks and a really weird user id something like pwjcfk so I have emailed Diigo asking that they delete the account so I can start over (there really isn’t anything in it.)  My thoughts on social bookmarking are it is very valuable and I want to become dependent upon it but, I am old and wise enough not to beat my head against the wall.  Reflection can be a powerful tool and I think modeling the skill is good for students. 

Well classmates, my almost empty Diigo account is very easy to log into now but still has little content but, my patience did pay off and with all issues resolved it only took a few minutes to move my Chrome bookmarks to Diigo.  I will need to add tags to my links but that too will happen.

Thoughts on Google Reader

I have been using Google Reader for over a year and LOVE IT!  I have set it up on my home page but, I don’t always have time to read all my subscriptions.  My reading vision is on the downward slide so I think having the full window for the reader is best for me and using digital texts is best because I can make the text larger or with greater contrasts.  My subscriptions are mostly educational, cooking, finance, psychology, travel, and now technology and web 2.0 tools.  I have not been religious about attending to reading my subscriptions but, when time is available I do enjoy going through them all.  

Having an over an hour drive to class and back each week has been a great opportunity to enjoy some iTunes podcasts on my iPod while driving. There is even an iTunes University Podcast from the University of South Florida on Social Media.  I also really enjoy listening to Freakonomics Radio Podcast for a different view on everyday topics.  This is the link to Freakonomics the movie so named after the book.  

Week 3 - Media Literacy

Yes, banning electronic devices when they are woven into the lives of our students doesn’t seem like the best solution. Our school has a “faculty council” which is basically a group elected by the staff to review and research concerns, it is not a group with authority but at times provides recommendations. Faculty writes down a concern and places it in a locked box similar to a suggestion box. Each month the council meets and reviews staff concerns with the biggest issue of late being cell phones. When our group began to sort out the cell phone concerns there was a common theme, inappropriate use. Our group felt that banning cell phones was equivalent to trying to hold back tidal waters, basically a battle that could not be won. I thought education could be the key and began to look for guidelines to cell phone etiquette for teens without success last spring.  What I did find was a book by Liz Kolb called Toys to Tools Connecting Student Cell Phones to Education. 


Take a look at this PBS video addressing cell phone or smart phone etiquette.

Liz Kolb's recent interview confirms a very similar mind set with Mike Wesch when it comes to student use and access to technology.  Both Liz and Mike beliefs focus on connecting to the student's world if you want to engage them. I don’t think anyone has all the answers but we need to be open to trying new approaches for connecting education and student interests. Mike Wesch added a facebook connection to the class wiki as a means to attract students but admits his uncertainty with the decision. I think the point is to ease into the possibilities looking for the opportunities. Mike is creative in his efforts to engage students and we need to be creative in our efforts, so that I students can see and experience the benefits of taking risks. Students need us to model what thinking outside the box is all about.

Consider viewing Kenneth Robinson’s Ted video on creativity.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Week 3 - Are we missing something here? By Chris Lehmann

Yes, we really are missing the big picture of educating for the 21st century.  Our government needs to mandate minimum requirements for all publicly accessed computer equipment which would include libraries and schools forcing accessibility options/disability options to be installed standard on every machine as part of the standard operating system.  It could make reading tradition formats or text readers like being right or left handed.  Remember, there was a day when being left-handed was considered negative!

There are many available resources for accessing print media that can be life changing for many people. The article, The Unhappy Place: What libraries can do to welcome kids who struggle with print includes some great resources.   Consider promoting the many sites that provide electronic texts on-line at no costs to users,  beginning at the University of Virginia's Library.  Keep in mind that many of the great literary works where written before copyright laws and have been digitized for download.

Mandating all library computers to have alternative texts enabled would be a giant step toward reaching equal access for all citizens.  Increasing people’s use of alternative texts will help reduce the stigmata currently associated with print disabilities.  Moving alternative texts to a main stream item and not a disability option.  Let's consider the opportunities that would be available for English Language Learners and for parents who are unable to read to their children. 

Consider the preference of digital texts especially when traveling. I always travel with a portable computer and something to read.  Now, I can  bring a large number of books without bulk and weight by downloading them to my laptop.  Amazon Kindle for the PC or Mac is a free convenient way to read and offers many books free or at lower cost than the print versions. On July 27, 2010, Amazon Kindle announced the first author to sell a million books on Kindle.  Yes, Stieg Larsson who wrote, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, is the first member of the Kindle Million Club. 

Week 2 Initial thoughts on CE5160

What do I know?  Well after spending my day following links I feel like I know very little.  What I think I have is the ability to figure things out probably from years of doing technical support and the logic class required for programming.  What I need is a blueprint for the district where I work to get loaner equipment and permission forms to allow for project based learning resources.  

I want to become a model for technology use to the students I teach but, I am apprehensive for two reasons; the first is the lack of technology equipment available to use in my computer lab, the second is that many of my students do not have computer and/or internet access at home.   I dislike modeling technology that my students cannot access.

I want to create a wiki to allow access to all the work my classes need to learn including video’s from the blocked web site you tube.  I want students to access class materials at: school, home, resource room, library, friend’s house, and any other place they have an opportunity to learn.  I want an open access place where both past and present can come to share and learn!  Yes, I want my students to access my links and lessons even long after leaving my class.  I am hoping that this class will lead me to the options I want for my students.

Week 2 - Initial thoughts on Chapter 1

Web 2.0 new tools, new schools, is exciting world of new possibilities. Many of us old enough to remember the Internet’s early days, probably remember the scratchy sounds of the modem connecting, then a log in screen. Yes, I am talking about the days of dial-up, baud rates, and downloads for drivers sometimes taking all night. Frequently finding myself absorbed in the new world of the Internet and search engines till dawn so consumed by the vast wealth of knowledge. Web 2.0 has a similar parallel to the early Internet days with seemingly endless possibilities. It is an exciting time to be involved in education and very much a back to basics at the same time.

Students need strong foundations built on enduring understand to create, build, apply, and synthesis what is and what will be. The new industries, products, and services teachers cannot begin to imagine is the world for which we need to prepare our students. Teachers can no longer teach students to use a program or a formula.  Teachers must provide the ability to understand how it functions and how it can apply to current and future work in both the classroom and businesses’ throughout the world. Anything short of understanding of that goal will comprise our economy and our position as a world leader. It is the reason why it is so important that teachers find a way to make things stick for students. 

As a high school teacher I believe that we must move beyond what education has traditionally valued and teach students how they learn. We need to help them explore tools that minimize their weaknesses and develop their strengths just as the world of work will need of them.  We must teach students that change and strengths are their only constants.  Students must be adaptable to be competitive in the 21^st century global economy.  Isn’t embracing change what has made Google and Facebook successful?