Publishing a Google Doc (Thing 4 Part 2)

Here is a link to the Google Doc I published. It's a summer reading assignment that my students do between seventh and eighth grade.

Google Chrome (Thing 5)

I have mixed feelings about Google Chrome. On one hand, it's definitely faster and more efficient than the other browsers I've been using, so I think I'll continue to use it. On the other hand, being asked to link my professional email to a browser and install apps and extensions that ask for permissions to "read and change all the data on the websites I visit" makes me really uncomfortable. It's not that I'm trying to hide anything or have anything to hide, just that I think we have too much of our information on the internet as it is and I would like to minimize my contribution to that.

To that end, I installed three apps that had permissions with which I was comfortable: Typing Club, Newsela, and Desmos. Typing Club was a great find because I've had several parents ask me about how to help their children become better typists; I actually just emailed one to tell her about it. I liked that it had a series of increasingly difficult typing skills (including how to sit properly at a computer) and that it was very user-friendly. It's easy, you don't need a program (I used Mavis Beacon in the 90s, which is still around, it seems!), and installation takes only seconds. Desmos was cool because the graph appeared instantly and was pretty to look at, and Newsela is a wonderful service overall (I particularly enjoyed the article about Harry Potter increasing children's tolerance of others).

I looked around the Chrome store and saw some other apps and extensions that looked cool; Readability and Instapaper spoke to me since I'm someone who consistently has more than 20 tabs open because I click on articles that I would like to read but don't have the time to in that moment. Both seem like they would save me some time and browser crashing because they allow me to save articles and read them offline if I want to. For classroom use, I like the idea of read&write, which allows students to look up definitions of words and hear passages read aloud to them.

I would recommend Chrome to my colleagues because it does work better than other browsers, and I know that other people like to customize their experiences even if I don't. It works well with the Google apps that I like because it is designed to do so, and even if I'm not using it to its full capacity, I like what it does for me.   

Google Apps (Thing 4)

Google has done some extraordinary things for education. I may be late to the party, but I didn't realize how much they have that is geared specifically toward teachers and students! I have used Google Docs in several classes that I've taught (both in District 36 and out of it), and this year I started with more spreadsheets and forms. This is the rare case in which I can say that the technology has made my life easier literally every time I've used it. All Google-related apps or programs that I've tried have worked exactly the way that they were supposed to work...the first time! :)

Google Docs has been the best collaborative tool that I've ever come across (no hyperbole!). The ability to read the documents as they come in and make comments in real time has fundamentally changed the way that I run my writing and reading workshops. Instead of having to wait for a paper copy of the essay to be turned in, I can see the minute that students are ready for me to comment, and since I can type much more quickly than I can write (and more legibly!), I can offer much more specific, focused feedback on their writing. They can also write comments back if my suggestions have been unclear or if they don't know how to do what I am suggesting. Here's what I used to have to do when giving feedback on student writing:

All the information is there, but it's super cluttered and probably hard for the students to read which comment goes with which sentence or paragraph. Now, here's what it looks like in Google Docs:

I know it's small, but hopefully you can see that the highlighted words correspond to the comments on the side and how much easier that is to follow than the "track changes" feature in Microsoft Word. I like Word very much, but I don't think it was really designed to collaborate, whereas Google Docs absolutely was, and it shows. I like that the comments are still available but hidden after the student checks "resolved" and that the earlier drafts are still there (which I didn't know before watching this intro video).

 

The second app that has been great for collaboration on a more professional level is Google Sheets (I mostly use the spreadsheet but have also branched out into the schedule when doing conferences or other meetings.) I haven't used the spreadsheet with students yet, but since I am lucky enough to co-teach, that tool has been invaluable for sharing data with each other. Our students work with Wordly Wise 3000 online, which is a great program but was a challenge in terms of managing the transfer of scores from the program into my gradebook. An additional challenge with the program in terms of record-keeping is that since it's self-paced and has different levels, each student could very well be at a different lesson or level at any given time. I have my students complete one lesson per week on average, but since they could be on different lessons and levels, it's not like I can say, "Do lesson seven of level eight for Friday." This was a nightmare for me until I discovered Google Sheets! I can keep each class's scores for each trimester in the same document thanks to the handy tabs at the bottom, and my co-teacher can input grades, adjust scores when students retake lessons, or check in with students about lessons they're missing without me having to be there or hand over a paper copy of the information. Here's what it looks like:

The due date and post-test score are across the top; in each column, I record the lesson that is due on that date and the score each student received on that lesson. The gray boxes are lessons that were submitted late, the blue boxes are lessons that were retaken so I know to average the scores, and the red boxes are scores that were lower than 79%, which means the lesson needs to be retaken. 

The third app that I have started to work with much more this year is Google Forms. I've used this with students as well, mostly for collecting information about projects in which the students have a certain amount of choice. For example, when I taught Shakespeare this year, I offered a choice of either A Midsummer Night's Dream or Macbeth. In the past, I would have taken class time to summarize each play and then ask the students individually which one they would rather read. This year, I created a very simple form that they completed outside of class; it provided a summary of each play and asked them to choose which one they wanted to read.

The REALLY cool thing (at least to me) was that the results of the form were automatically collected into a Google spreadsheet, which made it very easy for me to see who wanted to read what. (The last column is usernames, which I have cut off on purpose, but is obviously really important to this kind of use for the form.)

Another thing I use the forms to collect is information about how they are progressing on a long-term assignment. For this form, I wanted to know which person versus society conflict they had chosen to research from their Civil Rights book group, why they had chosen that one, and what information they already had.

This form will give you either individual or summary responses and can also be exported into a spreadsheet. The individual responses just look like the form filled out, and the summary response view gives you a list of all of the answers to each question. It also provides a quick view list at the top of who has and has not responded - a very important tool for managing assignments, at least for me.

This is just the start of the first question ("What conflict did you choose?"). The pie chart - which updates in real time and is sort of cool to watch if you have time! - is what percentage of each class responded.

One app I would like to get better at using is Google Calendar. I think it would be great for collaborating professionally - then my colleagues and I wouldn't have to call or email each other to schedule all of our meetings - and I probably wouldn't forget things or have to use a dozen post-its stuck to my laptop. David Lee's ed tech blog seems like a good place to start for me, and although I've know about TeacherCal for a while, I haven't really used it, and it seems like this would be cool. Finally, this video brings me full circle: back to the beginning of this entry where I said that Google has done extraordinary things that are applicable for education specifically. I love it. You can attach documents to your calendar! Who knew? (Probably everyone else, but not me. :) ) You can also share the calendar so your co-teacher can edit and view! (I did know that, but I'm excited about it all over again.) 

P.S. This video is from 2014, but I think the basic information is the same. I'll find out when I try!

Responding to "Blogging as Reflective Practice" (Thing 3 Stretch)

In her post "Blogging as Reflective Practice", Gina Minks explains how she uses blogging as a way to reflect on and better her job performance as well as how it can create communities. I happen to agree with this on a deep level since it was blogging (in large part) that sustained my connection to my teaching practice when I took a year off to go to graduate school literally 1,000 miles away from the school where I teach.

Ms. Minks mentions that people seem to think bloggers have too much time on their hands or that blogging is superficial. While it can be a great time-waster, it can also be deeply reflective and time-consuming. She links in her blog to a 2007 study out of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom that concluded that blogging benefited students and encouraged reflection as well as linked the students' lives outside of the classroom to the activities that they completed inside of it. The very idea that educational blogging has occupied a prominent enough position to be the subject of an academic study says to me that we cannot dismiss it as something that bored teenagers do when they feel like no one is listening to them.  

Putting ideas into words has always helped me solidify my feelings on a subject and exposed when I do and do not understand something fully. If I can't summarize it, then I didn't get it. Both my undergraduate and graduate institutions placed a very high emphasis on reflection, and although it doesn't much matter to me whether I do that reflection on a piece of paper or online, there is no doubt that that early practice has stayed with me into my almost ten-year teaching career. I still take the time to jot a few notes after almost every lesson, and when I can take a moment to blog about them, I do it. I haven't done it much lately, but perhaps this will help jumpstart me back into the habit.

The one major benefit that blogging has over private journaling is that you can, if you so choose, open up your blog to the whole world. It is because of this access that I have confined my blogging to the professional domain; after all, I'm not sure that anyone really wants to hear my thoughts about "The Bachelor" or the latest Adele album (although I do have a lot of thoughts about both of those!). The great thing about blogging about teaching is that it immediately invites thousands of other teachers right into your classroom - if something went poorly, all of those other sets of (mostly supportive, because who really reads teacher blogs to fling mud?) experienced eyes can tell me exactly where I went wrong and how to fix it. One of the best and most fulfilling teaching experiences I have had is co-teaching. I know that some people don't like the idea of more adults in their classrooms, but I have always found that having another teacher in my room immediately lifts the caliber of my teacher. Not because I'm trying to show off, but because I have another professional whom I trust implicitly there to give me timely and specific feedback on my practice. Blogging about teaching is like having thousands of co-teachers available to me at a moment's notice.

Blogging is also one of the best practices in revision that I, as a writer and a teacher of writing, have ever experienced. Because my audience is potentially so large (not that my blogs have ever garnered a ton of attention, let's be clear about that), I'm much more careful about what I write and how I write it because I don't want to be misconstrued. I fact-check once, twice, and on the more controversial topics, three and four more times because I want to be absolutely sure I'm right. Isn't this what we want our students to do? I realized this was one of the best real-world writing exercises I could give my students as I was writing that last sentence and will now try to incorporate this into my teaching next year. We do online discussions fairly regularly, but I have never tried to use blogs because of the privacy issues. We'll see if I can make it work.

So...reflective practice in action. It was literally as I was typing those words that I realized I could make the revision point to my students with this example better than I ever could if their audience was just going to be their classmates and me. Because for better or for worse, sometimes kids in this generation care more about what the internet thinks than what I think. Why not use that to sneakily get them to use the right there/their/they're?  

Teaching Writing in the 21st Century (Thing 2)

I looked for a video that had to do with writing because that's the bulk of what I teach, and I feel like a lot of the "21st century learning" around writing is just about the new publishing apps. I like this video a lot because it acknowledges that importance of face-to-face collaboration and handwriting along with typing and online editing/revision.

Thoughts about Web 2.0 (Thing 2)

I mentioned it in my last post and I will reiterate now: I don't like the idea of thinking that the ultimate goal of schools is only preparing students for a competitive global workforce. Obviously, our students are going to enter the workforce in some way or another. And even more obviously, that workforce will be competitive and probably more global than we can even conceptualize at this point. However, if we really want them to become lifelong learners and learn for the sake of learning, not to get ahead of their competition for jobs, then we need to reframe the message. Otherwise, like generations of students before them, they are learning skills that only apply in a specialized context, and that seems to be the opposite of what we need to teach them now.

Another thing that bothered me about Web 2.0 (again, I mentioned this in my last post) was it seemed like the assumption was unless we are using brand new technology every minute of the day, we are doing something wrong. Especially in the "A Vision of Students Today" video, it appeared that the statistics about teachers who never used digital storytelling (for example) were meant to illustrate that those teachers were doing something wrong. I do realize that this video is from 2007 (many of these materials were several years old) and that it is at least partially because of my pre-existing feelings that I felt scolded. I actually have used digital storytelling in the forms of "This I Believe" podcasts and Garageband for both personal and literary argumentative pieces (and Storyboard That this year for the first time - loved it!), but I don't believe it was only the technology that made those experiences memorable for the students. It helped them literally bring their own voices and visuals to their stories, and that is absolutely important. However, using statistics about which teachers do and do not use specific pieces of technology (especially nine years ago, when the technology was pretty clunky) to presumably show that they are "behind the times" overshadows, at least in my mind, the very salient message of that video. We need to be responsive and reflective educators, and technology is ONE way to do that. It is not the only way.   

I feel like I need to acknowledge that I AM aware that this is an educational technology course and as such, we'll be exposed to a lot of different technology options that we could use in our classroom. They will probably also be presented in a positive light; after all, why would we be taught about problematic or inapplicable tools? I DO want to learn about different ways that technology can help my students learn or bring them closer to topics they care about. I just also want to make sure that we remember that technology is not the saving grace of the educational system: it is a tool. Students, teachers, and their relationships will always be the most important thing to the learning process.

I liked reading "A Day in the Life of Web 2.0" very much. It showed that even 10 years ago, people were tinkering with the possibilities of what online collaboration and communication could do for teachers and students. It also included examples of face-to-face collaboration that was supplemented by the online collaboration, such as the cross-curricular teaching involved in the Monday report blogs and the research the librarian did for the new math teacher. The freedom to use technology as the students and teachers saw fit made me wonder if our students would be that responsible with their tools. I have had to manage kids playing games on their iPads during reading time in my own classroom; I'm not sure that they would use texting or iMessaging solely for school projects the way these students did. It also makes me think that if they were more engaged, they wouldn't be misusing their iPads, but how can we change reading to be more engaging? They already have the ability and permission to read however they want (a paper book, on their iPads or Kindles, with an audiobook, etc.) but since that's a skill they need to keep practicing, there's not much we can do to change it. However you do it, reading is reading, and they need to be able to do it. 

They also need to be able to spell correctly or at least recognize when a word is misspelled so they can look it up; autocorrect and spellcheck have stunted those skills for our kids. They don't have to have the perseverance to double-check on a word anymore. And for as great as online discussions are - and I love them! - they have revealed another weakness in our students' communication: they don't seem to be able to recognize what is an appropriate tone for the school audience anymore. Schoology messaging and emailing seem to be places where they think they can use text speak, even with their teachers, and I will never be okay with this. I always teach tone and audience characteristics in a literary and argumentative context, but I have started to have to teach it in a classroom communication context as well. Incorporating technology into the classroom that they also use outside of the classroom creates flow and consistency, effectively breaking down the erroneous assumption that learning only takes place in the classroom from teacher to student. However, it also blurs the lines between talking to your friends and talking to your teacher, and I think those lines need to remain bold. I don't talk to my students' parents or my boss the same way I talk to my friends; this is a lifelong skill students will need.

I have used Schoology much more this year and have loved the perks of being able to only take home my laptop and have my quizzes and essays right there at my fingertips. I have also loved the online discussions; I get to hear more from the students who are quiet in class, and my students can respond to peers that they don't necessarily communicate with in class. I am also a huge proponent of students being creators, not just consumers, of content: that is the best way to learn something. It is much more active, and learning should be an active process. I read a study a while ago about how students who created content were more confident and ended up being more successful as adults than those who simply consumed it - I'll find it! Unfortunately, these consumers v. creators tended to fall along socioeconomic lines, so part of the article was about how to get technology in the hands of underprivileged students. We don't have that problem in our district, but we do have kids who are overwhelmed by the amount of content they are exposed to, and I worry about them managing their learning with all of these new tools. That's one more thing we need to teach them in this 21st century world, and it is an important one for beyond school. Too often, even adults just skim articles online and don't check sources: we didn't have to do that when we used encyclopedias! Of course, there is more information out there now, and much of it is great - but just like we had to learn things our parents didn't, our students now need to learn to catalogue and evaluate information at a much higher rate than we ever did. It is a daunting, but potentially exciting, task for everyone.   

Reflections on Lifelong Learning (Thing 1)

Of all the things that have changed in the education field in the last decades, I think one thing that has remained constant has been the idea of "lifelong learning." It may have looked different in different times, but I think you would be hard-pressed to find a teacher who didn't want his or her students to continue learning after they left his or her classroom.

I also think that the 7 1/2 habits outlined in the video have remained largely constant; again, the technology that was available to people has changed pretty dramatically, but the basic premise behind the habits is timeless. Setting goals, accepting responsibility for your own learning, viewing problems as challenges rather than obstacles, having confidence in yourself as a learner, creating your own learning "toolbox", using technology to your advantage, teaching/mentoring others, and playing with the knowledge you gain are teaching strategies that have been around for a long time. And if they haven't, we have been doing a disservice to our students.

Where people - educators and politicians and parents and students and almost every other "stakeholder" in education today - may differ is in their interpretations of these habits. Accepting responsibility for your own learning, for example, may look like one thing to one person and a totally different thing to another. When I post the day's activities, homework, and handouts on Schoology, it is my understanding that the students will use that resource and try to figure out what they missed if they were absent. To me, using Schoology instead of emailing me about the homework is taking responsibility for their own learning because I have set it up to help them. However, they may think that going directly to the source is more responsible and will often reach out to me before checking our course page online.

I think the most challenging habit for me will be to teach or mentor others since I am not totally comfortable with all the technology we are using yet. Teaching someone else before you have a good understanding of something usually leads to disaster (at least it has for me). I need a very strong understanding of something before I can try to explain it. However, some of the tools we have used this week have been familiar to me, so I will try to help others with those I know.

Another challenging habit - one that will be very important to me as I continue my work in this course - will be to see problems as challenges and not obstacles. I love physical books, paper, pen and pencil, post-its...and I have grudgingly accepted Google Docs and Schoology work submissions into my life because they really have made my teaching easier and more efficient. However, much of the other technology that I have tried to incorporate into my classroom has failed me or derailed my teaching. When I make the move from a paper quiz to one on Schoology and the Schoology server is down, my entire lesson plan has gone down the drain. When I forget my laptop at home or it is being worked on and I can't project something because my new Ladibug document camera is linked to my laptop, that's frustrating since my old one was not and I liked it like that. When I want my students to work on their online vocabulary through the Wordly Wise 3000 program - a program that has a paper version I have used for years and loved - but the app keeps crashing, the students are sidetracked. I tend to focus on the negative when it comes to technology in the classroom because I believe that we are, in many situations, putting the cart before the proverbial horse and trying to force technology into school without thinking about whether it actually solves more problems than it causes. However, after working with programs and tools that have been successful, my lessons do take on an extra dimension and lead to more engaged students. For them, I need to work on my attitude.

One thing that I have always been good at is creating my own learning "toolbox" - mostly in the form of finding out who knows what I don't and then going to that person for help. I learned that lesson very early in my pre-teaching career, and it has never failed me. The online teaching community is so strong, especially around reading and writing, and I feel very comfortable reaching out for help on just about anything. I'm teaching writing to elementary students this summer, and as a middle school teacher, I was pretty anxious about my interactions with younger kids. I posed some questions to Twitter and Facebook, and within an hour, I had dozens of tips and lesson ideas. Of course, I also reached out in person to my friends who were elementary teachers, and they had great ideas as well. So, technology and the online community are excellent support systems, but I don't think anything will replace the face-to-face conversations I had with my colleagues.

Admittedly, I am going into this course with pre-existing ideas about technology and education. The 7 1/2 habits presentation reinforced what I think is an unfair attitude about "old school" teaching: that there is something inherently wrong with being quiet and seated. In order to get new information, sometimes you have to be quiet and seated - look at the kids who are reading books or searching online or simply listening to a teacher (or other student) explain something. Students who do not have the ability to do this or have never been taught to do this will suffer, not just in the classroom, but in their jobs (it seems like all the videos also promoted the idea that lifelong learning was just to get ahead in the workforce, which I disagree with as well) and relationships as they grow. And sometimes students ARE tardy and need to be helped with time and materials management, whatever is stopping them from getting to class on time. Tardiness in the world beyond the schoolhouse is not tolerated or encouraged (either professionally or personally), so not holding them responsible for that would be a failure on my part. Of course, lifelong learning will not always happen in a classroom, but when they are expected to be a part of a classroom (and beyond), these "old school" skills - which I wholeheartedly believe we still need to teach - are important.