Venturing into the Online Writing Market

            I write a lot, but I seldom do more than short articles and materials for use in the classes I teach.  I have played with the idea of writing a textbook, but I have yet to take the plunge.  One plunge I did take this summer and continued again during the winter break is trying to write online.  I do write here, but I’m talking about submitting my work and having it approved and published online.

            This summer, after some research and some thought, I chose to try InfoBarrel and Yahoo Contributor Network.  Today I am going to comment about my more successful venture:  Yahoo Contributor Network.

            Yahoo Contributor, as the name implies, is part of the Yahoo group of sites.  Writers who belong to it submit various types of articles for publication in a variety of its sites including Yahoo Voices.  It describes itself as a “platform for crowd-sourced content.”  It does pay writers, but the sums are low.  Still, I decided to give it a try. 

One thing that is nice about the network is its academies.  They are mini lessons that show you what Yahoo wants in terms of content and how to successfully write for the Web.  Once I began taking those courses and putting their advice into practice, my submissions were accepted at a much higher rate.

One thing that is not as nice is that the pay low.  When I have received upfront payments for my articles, they have been only $3 so far.  There is the promise of performance payments for the life of the site, but a writer won’t see payment until she begins to submit consistently and constantly.  One person offered the advice that you should strive for at least two articles a day.  Yahoo Contributor Network starts its performance payment at $1.50 per 1000 views.  You can eventually earn as much as $2.00 per 1000 views.  I took at look at some of the more successful Yahoo Contributor Network writers who have been there since 2005 and 2006.  They have impressive numbers as to how many views, but when I did the math, they earned maybe $8,000 in 7 years.  That’s a little more $1000 a year.  Still the articles they you write request average about 300 words, so I figure it’s worth a try.

Like I said, I’m still new at this, but there is the promise of more, and more importantly, it will force me to write constantly and consistently which will help hone my writing skills for the Web and make my brain function better, so ideas come to me more easily.  Wish me luck!

Helicopter Student?

                We have all heard of helicopter parents, but how many have had experiences with a helicopter student?  I guess the right term is the hyper-vigilant student.  I haven’t had too many, but I have certainly had a few.   And I’m afraid I am about to have one again this coming semester.

                What is a hyper-vigilant student?  You would think this student would be a teacher’s dream, but he/she’s not.  Let me explain.

                What set off my radar antennae off this time were the emails I began receiving last week.  I usually get a few students who have a few questions about my online classes, and I gladly answer them.  Around the 4^th email, I was getting concerned.  The questions just kept coming from this student. And this morning, my frustration level was high when I counted 10 emails from this student.  In the last email the student wanted to know what type of questions did each of my exams have.

                Now, I wonder what this student is going to be like during the entire semester.

                Don’t get me wrong.  I like when my students email me with questions about the course, but there is a difference between needing some clarification and asking question after question.

                Is this student going throw my own words into my face me if my course isn’t exactly like I said?  “You said that your course would have….”

                Is this student going to be angry if I don’t have each assignment graded within 24-hour period?  I did have one student who spent the entire semester being angry because I took too long to grade assignments and blasted me with my own words (out of context) once she knew her grade was safe.  It didn’t matter if it took me a week to grade a paper or 2-days to grade an assignment; she was angry.

                Is this student going to need exact clarification on each assignment I give out?

                Who knows, but all those emails has me on hyper-alert.  What am I in for?

                I once had a student who wanted to know how she could bring up her grade.  I went and checked her grade, and she had a 95%.  I told her to keep working hard, but that an A is an A, and when I turn in grades, the system would not ask me for a percent but simply a letter grade.  Fortunately, she was satisfied with that, but it made me nervous.

                Thing is; I want my students to care about their grades and to work hard in my classes.  There are many who could care less and simply fade away during the semester.  But I also hope I get students who have realistic expectations about the course, the assignments and the turn-around time for grading assignments.  I hope I get students who don’t send 10 emails in one week asking for more and more details – Frankly, this student has made me nervous, but I’m still hoping for a good semester.  I’ll let you know what happens.

                What are my tips for online students who care?

• Do contact your instructor ahead of time if you have particular question that can’t wait.  This semester, I have one student trying to fit in a family vacation between spring and summer semesters; she asked some questions about the end of the semester and timing of finals.  That’s fine.
• Don’t contact your instructor to find every particular detail about the course.  Those can wait until either the online course becomes available or the first day of an in-person class.
• Do check your grades and make sure what’s recorded matches what you have received back.  Yes, teachers can make mistake keying in scores.  It’s okay to check and ask when there’s a discrepancy.
• Don’t ask how you can make your grade higher if you have an A.  In college, an A is an A – keep up the good work, but leave the teacher out of trying to for personal best.
• Don’t ask for a grade within 48 hours after turning in an assignment, especially if it’s a paper.  Remember, if you were meeting in a traditional classroom, you would meet either once or twice a week, and in all likelihood, papers wouldn’t be returned until at least a week later. 
• Do sign all emails with your name.  Many email addresses do not have a student’s name in it, so the teacher may not know who is mailing her.  And don’t expect the instructor to keep a cheat sheet of all email addresses.  Be courteous – sign your name each and every time.
• Don’t share an email address with another person.  Instructors cannot share your information with anyone but you, so if your college doesn’t provide an email address for you, go to Yahoo or Google and sign up for your own email address and use it for the course.  Instructors must adhere to FERPA regulations.

Using Technology to Teach Writing & English

            There is so much technology out there, where do you start if you are a teacher of writing?  Some believe that you should teach writing the old fashioned way and that is to have students write.  That is absolutely true, but today, you need to use the technology that’s available to help students become better writers in today’s challenging environment.

            I am a firm believer in spelling tests and having students write some compositions by hand.  I also believe in having them use pencil and paper to plan and map out papers, at least initially.  There is something in the act of physically picking up a pencil and writing on paper that reinforces lessons, spelling and good writing.  That being said, I also believe in embracing technology to enhance my lessons.

            The problem is there is so much out and so little time to explore and try out the technologies that I find myself sometimes overwhelmed by the choices and the challenge of making time to actually integrate them into my in person and online classes.

            What are some of the things that I use when I teach English and writing?

PowerPoint

            People say that PowerPoint is only meant to enhance what a speaker is saying.  And that is true if you are giving a speech, but I have found other valuable uses for PowerPoint

Teaching Grammar through Examples

            I love PowerPoint simply because I can use it for my grammar lessons so easily.  I take exercises and put them in PowerPoint and add timing so that the question or sentence appears first.  Then with the click of the mouse, I can make the answers appear once I have given students a chance to answer.  I have done all kinds of things such as circling important parts and making items disappear to leave only the correct item up.  It forces all eyes to the front of the classroom and keeps students engaged.

Testing Students’ Comprehension through Games

            Templates exist online for PowerPoint Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, and Pyramid games.  Students have a competitive spirit, so after I create the games in PowerPoint, I break them into teams, and they go head-to-head answering questions about grammar, writing or literature. Students who are sometimes totally apathetic about my courses suddenly come alive when these games come out.  Just about everyone participates, and we have a chance to review lessons in a fun lively way.

Video and Audio Streaming

            For my literature courses, I scour the Internet and my schools’ library databases for video of the stories, plays and poets we cover in class.  When it comes to the stories, our discussions center around how each of us may have come up with a different way for portraying the story than what we have just seen.  We talk about what would need to be changed in the story because of the difference between print media and video.  When it comes to drama, seeing the plays sometimes helps students understand them better.  This is especially true with the Shakespearean plays since students often understand it better once they see the actors’ actions accompanying the words.  For poetry, audio streaming has spurred lots of discussion because I am often able to find recording by two different readers, and students see how differently they respond to a poem depending on the reader’s voice and pacing.  It is especially fun with they get to listen to the poet reading his or her own poem.

Video Capturing

            Now, I am rather shy, and I certainly don’t like being filmed, but I have discovered a use for video capturing in my online classrooms.  I am more willing to lend my voice and my desktop, and I have used video capturing to show students how to do certain thing on the computer and how to navigate my online classes.  I have from the beginning put detailed written directions for the same purpose, but when I added the video capturing to my online classes, I had fewer questions.  Offering both written directions and video directions seem to cover my student population.  The key with video capturing is to keep it short (under 5 minutes) and to rehearse and keep re-recording until you have a fairly seamless errorless video to show your students.

The Future

            Time seems to be my enemy when it comes to innovation, but there are other things I would love to do with my courses to make them come alive for the modern student.  I think we still need to have high expectation for them, but they in turn expect us to be aware of the times and to use the same tools that they do.  I will keep my eyes open and adopting technology that I think adds value to what I teach.

Difficult Students Don’t Always Misbehave

I teach mostly online these days, and while I don’t have the normal classroom disruptions that face-to-face teacher confront, I do have instances of difficult students.  This week has reminded me once again of the over-achiever/know it all student.

Don’t get me wrong: I do admire over-achievers, and once upon a time I was one of the students who always did her work, turned it in on time, and even put in the extra effort to get the best grade possible.  However, I never proceeded to criticize a teacher or admonish her for anything she did with her class.  I may have griped behind her back to my friends, but I never confronted her aggressively.  I did questions my grades and comments on my assignments, but never with criticism in my voice (that I know of).

But I am finding more and more the aggressive student – one who feels like it’s okay to call out a teacher publically or with a tone.

What got me riled this week?  This week one of my students caught me on a typo where I used the correct chapter title, but I used an incorrect chapter number.  I certainly made a mistake and it probably stemmed from updating my class from a previous edition of the textbook.  The email was okay, but she also posted that portion on the discussion board – to make it more public (although she posted that without the tone of the email). And then in the same email she proceeded to complain that other students were not turning in quality posts in the discussion board when she put every effort to craft responses that are well written and error free.

How did I handle her?  Carefully.  Seriously, I thanked her for pointing out my mistake and that I would take care of it.  What can I do?  A mistake is a mistake, and it’s better to acknowledge it.  As to her second point about the quality of work form other students, I told her the truth:  I have no control over what students turn in.  I outline the standards that I will hold them to, and I grade students according to the material they turn in.  I also said that she should continue to work hard and submit quality work.

I could have written to her that it is none of her business what other students do, but that would have just escalated the situation.  I could have also said that FERPA prevents me from discussing other students’ grade with her.  There are so many things I could have responded with and did in my own mind, but I didn’t.  I am the instructor of the course, and I am a professional.  I have to temper my responses to the situation and show the student that I am the instructor of the course and certainly in charge of it.

I have had students like her before, and I will continue to have ones like her again.  But my previous experiences have taught me how to handle the aggressive ones that feel empowered to push the boundaries – with restraint and professionalism.

A Site to Make Math Homework Easier

School has begun, and now my children are coming home and needing math homework help.  Although I excelled at math, I have to admit I’m rusty.  The other night, my daughter didn’t believer that all her addition and subtraction of mixed fractions was wrong.  They were, and I knew it, but she made me doubt myself.  Now, I’m a techie.  I teach English online.  I design Web sites.  And I consult for people who have technology problems.  I turned to the Internet, and I began arming myself with sites that would help me get through homework challenges with my kids when it comes to math.  I’ll start with the one that convinced my daughter that I was right, and she was wrong and needed to redo her homework.  She got 100% percent I might add and understood it complete.

Calculator Soup - http://www.calculatorsoup.com/

I love this site because it didn’t just give you the answers.  It showed you the steps to the answer.  Without those steps, my daughter would not have believed me.  Another good feature of this site is that input is easy.  Some math sites, you have to put the problems in such an awkward manner that you confuse a child who is already struggling.  One thing I must say, however, is that it solved the problem different than my daughter had been taught in school, but her teacher was okay with it because she showed her work and could explain the math process behind it.  My daughter used it only for the first two, and then she did the work herself and used the calculator to check her work.

This site is also good for my son’s physics class.  It doesn’t cover every sort of physics problem such as his unit dealing with gravity, but it’s a good starter.  The explanations are clear and uncluttered which really matters to him.  In a future blog, I’ll see about finding a better Physics site for high school.

What type of math does this site cover?

Algebra	Math
Chemistry	Physics
Construction	Statistics
Conversions	Geometry
Discrete Math	Plane Geometry
Finance	Solid Geometry
Fractions	Trigonometry
Games & Sports	Time
Loans	Word Problems

Many of them will not apply to you, but it’s quite comprehensive.

Also, the Math links you to all kinds of math – just about everything your child will come across during elementary, middle and high school.

Tragedy Strikes Our Neighborhood

This has been a really hard week on our neighborhood.  During the Labor Day weekend, one of the neighborhood children died.  It was a parent’s worst nightmare.  The family was enjoying a weekend at a lake when one of the children went missing.  He was found some hours later after a frantic search by family and fire rescue crews.  He had drowned.

Nathan had just begun kindergarten.  He was a charming and handsome little guy.  He was little impulsive and definitely determined to keep up with his older brother.  And his baby sister was equally determined to keep up with both of her older brothers.  They were fun to watch, and we as a community all looked out for each others’ children and enjoyed watching them grow.

Everyone is still reeling from the news, and none of us can imagine what his parents are going through.  At this time, I think they are probably still numb.  They have been fortunate to be surrounded by family and friends.  The hardest part is yet to come when the funeral is over, and they have to find some way to go on for their other two children.

Most of us don’t even have words to describe how we are feeling.  We are not the parent of this little 5 year old boy, yet his sudden death has haunted each of us deeply this week.  We haven’t spoken much with each other, but when we have, we can’t find much to say beyond that we keep thinking about Nathan and his family.  And we can’t stop thinking about him.  About them.

Yesterday, finally there were a few hours when I got so deeply involved in my work that that was all I thought about.  It gave me a little peace because I was able to let go of the sadness for just a little while.  But when I go to my driveway’s end and the bus stop and I stand next to their yard and see all the cars, the sadness just comes rushing back.  I try to block it out, but it just seeps in.

This will leave permanent scars on all of us because we all care.

I look at my children, and there is such a sense of relief that none of the close calls we had when they were little resulted in more than some scary moments and occasional scrapes.  We forget that children are just as impulsive and stubborn as adults but without the experiences and wisdom.  A tragedy can strike in the blink of an eye even with the most diligent of parents.  And one moment can mean the difference between a close call and tragedy.

I hug my children tightly and take a moment to enjoy their warmth and scent.

Katie & Justin are asking that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in Nate's name to Mechanicsville Elementary School - Playground Fund.

School Violence: What Is the Reality?

This week was the first week back to school for my children, and just one county away on the very first day, one teenager shot another in the cafeteria.  Right now, rumors are flying.  We know little about the shooter other than he’s being charged as an adult and that he is troubled with a troubled family life.  Oh yeah, we know some other troubling things because of his Facebook page.  We know little about the victim, although it seems likely he wasn’t the target, since he seems to be a gentle teen with Down syndrome.

The news shook many of us in our community, although most of us are not up in arms about it in our own children’s schools.  However, we are still concerned.  After all, it wasn’t that long ago that there was the shooting at the movie theater in Colorado on Batman’s opening night.

So what is the truth about violence in schools?

According to the CDC’s Web site on school violence, “less than 1 percent of all homicides among school-age children happen on school grounds or on the way to or from school.”  Another statistic given out by the CDC in 2007 is “during the past seven years, 116 students were killed in 109 separate incidents – an average of 16.5 student homicides per year.” 

Here are a few more facts about school violence taken directly from the CDC from a study done in 2009:

·         11.1% reported being in a physical fight on school property in the 12 months preceding the survey.

·         15.1% of male students and 6.7% of female students reported being in a physical fight on school property in the 12 months preceding the survey.

·         5.0% did not go to school on one or more days in the 30 days preceding the survey because they felt unsafe at school or on their way to or from school.

·         5.6% reported carrying a weapon (gun, knife or club) on school property on one or more days in the 30 days preceding the survey.

·         7.7% reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property one or more times in the 12 months preceding the survey.

            Of course, I began this blog with gun violence, and this survey covers all types of violence from shoving to more serious such as gun violence.  I was surprised to see that 7.7% said they were threatened or injured by a weapon.  There has been such a zero tolerance policy for so long in schools, I expected that number to lower.  I was also surprised at how many students admitted to carrying a weapon (5.5%).

            If you want to put these percentages into perspective, go with the estimate that we have 55.5 million students enrolled in pre-kindergarten through 12^th grade.  So of the 7.7% who were threatened or injured by a weapon in the United States translate to roughly 4,273,500 children.  Of the 5.5% who admitted to carrying a weapon that translates to 3,052,500 children.  When you take the percentages out and put it into cold hard numbers, it feels high.

            One thing that surprised me was learning that violent deaths are more likely to happen at the start or end of each semester.  It fits completely with the shooting in Perry Hall High School just a few days ago.  Still, I don’t think of the first day of school as one where violence would occur.

            Another fact by the CDC is “Nearly 50% of homicides perpetrators gave some type of warning signal, including making a threat or leaving a note, prior to the event.”  This also proved true of the shooting this week.  The teenager’s Facebook page had a comment that showed pretty clearly that the teen would do something violent that day.  Look at the CDC’s fact sheet, and you’ll see that this teen had many of the risk factors (http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/SchoolViolence_FactSheet-a.pdf).

            Lately, most people have focused on bullying as the root cause for much of the violence in our schools.  At least that’s what school officials and the media lead us to believe.  But you look at the risks factors on the CDC’s sheet, and you get the sense that it’s more complex than that.  Bullying can be a catalyst, but there is so much more that goes into creating a child who could possibility commit violence at school.

             I don’t know exactly what I can do to keep my children safe.  Some of it has trusting the school system to monitor and evaluate daily behaviors of children and trusting people in my own community to do the same for children they know.  The other thing I tell my children regularly is to be aware of the children around them and how they treat them and just as importantly how they friends treat them. 

Once in a while I say to my son when he tells me about some taunting or crude behavior he witnessed his classmates doing to other boys that they should all be careful how they treat other kids because those kids will remember the meanness, and you never know if one day they’ll come to school and do something violent to those same kids.  I ask him how he would feel if he was treated that way.  I know it’s a harsh thing to tell my son, but that is the world we live in.